Traumatised hospital employees on strike over unpaid Covid bonus for risking lives

Today Denise Stevens took to the picket line at Russells Hall Hospital within the Black Country city on the coronary heart of Britain’s industrial historical past. Like 300 different porters, cleaners, switchboard operators and cooks taking strike motion over an unpaid “Covid bonus”, Denise works at Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, however is employed by personal contractor Mitie, run by a Yorkshireman often known as “Miami Phil” Bentley.

Last 12 months, Miami Phil took residence £5.9million – together with a bonus of almost £4.8million in money and firm shares. “Dudley Denise”, 69, is one in every of his lowest paid employees, combating alongside her colleagues for a £1,655 lump sum they’re owed for risking their lives throughout Covid. Staff on the picket line instructed us of harrowing experiences working at Dudley’s hospitals within the pandemic.

“Sometimes we would be moving 12 or 13 bodies a day,” stated porter Richard Harris, 39. “The mortuary was backed up. We became numb, the volume of bodies we were dealing with was traumatic.” Chef Sylvia Rowe, 64, stated the hospital “felt like a death box, bodies coming and going, black ambulances lined up around the back of the hospital.”

Supervisor Ellen Cooke, 36, instructed us: “I had grown women and men crying because they were scared to go home to their families. At the beginning we didn’t even have PPE. We wore 3M face masks, which pressed so hard on to our faces it caused nosebleeds. I remember taking my mask off and the whole front of me was covered in blood.”

Far from listening to employees, it seems Mitie could also be resorting to union-busting. The Mirror has seen an e-mail despatched to workers on the Manston asylum detention centre – 200 miles away – the place Mitie helps detain 1,300 asylum seekers. “As a result of scheduled strike action,” the letter says, “we are looking for volunteers to support our colleagues in Russells Hall Hospital Dudley…” It provides: “This is an exciting ­opportunity for Manston colleagues to experience another area of our ­business and earn some extra money.”

The letter affords volunteer strike-breakers a £50 voucher, paid journey to and from Dudley, their in a single day lodging, and three meals a day. The Prison Officers’ Association says it has instructed its members to not take up the “outrageous” supply.

The common secretaries of the UK’s two largest unions wrote to Mr Bentley, responding to Mitie’s declare it will probably’t afford the bonus funds. “If that’s the case, then we struggle to see how Mitie can pay the £5.9million remuneration package you received last year, or your annual bonus,” says the letter from Unison’s Christina McAnea and Unite’s Sharon Graham. “Mitie can easily afford to pay the lump sum. Its profits were generated from the hard work and dedication of low-paid employees.”

Unison and Unite say Mitie owes Denise and her colleagues at the very least £1,655 – agreed as a part of a wider settlement to the NHS dispute. The lump sum has already been given to a whole lot of hundreds of NHS staff. Mitie is signed as much as Agenda for Change, which implies members of the NHS workforce it employs shouldn’t be handled in a different way to these immediately employed by the NHS.

“The company says it hasn’t got the money,” Christina McAnea stated. “Yet it can find cash to spend on bringing in strike-breaking workers from sites miles away. Mitie must do what’s right and pay up now or the strikes will continue.”

Sharon Graham says the employees have her union’s full backing. “It is shameful these vital workers who keep the NHS going are being kicked in the teeth,” she says. “Mitie is a multimillion-pound company which announced huge profits last year.”

“Miami Phil” Bentley earned his title whereas at telecoms firm Cable & Wireless, the place he shuttled between the corporate’s operations in Florida and the Caribbean. Before that the Bradfordian was at British Gas the place he presided over rocketing costs and escalating income. He later returned to the UK to Mitie’s outsourcing empire in 2016, run from London’s prestigious Shard constructing. For the hanging hospital employees, the dispute has introduced traumatic recollections of the pandemic just lately explored in ITV drama Breathtaking.

“We are all so upset about it,” says Denise, a grandmother who has labored on the hospital for 37 years. “Everybody works so hard, and we are so loyal, and then to be treated like this.” Richard, a porter who can be a department steward for Unison, says: “I compare the pandemic with the film Outbreak. Some of the images will last until I die.”

Chef Sylvia has labored on the hospital for 25 years. “At the beginning of the pandemic we didn’t even have PPE, just the visors,” she says. “We were scared to breathe in and out. It almost felt like we would die. We put our lives and our families on the line, now we feel devalued. The last time I went on holiday was in2019 for my 60th birthday.”

Su Lowe, regional officer for Unite, says the hospital is a “tight-knit family”. “These people could all work in shops for more money, but they chose to work for the NHS,” she says.

A spokesman for Mitie stated: “We’re disappointed Unison members have voted to take industrial action, given we’ve kept our colleagues regularly updated that we are still awaiting a response from government on our funding application. As always, our priority is to ensure our services continue to be delivered and we have strong contingencies in place to avoid any disruption to patient care. We’re proud of the hard work and dedication of all our colleagues up and down the UK, including those supporting the NHS.”

Staff at Dudley’s hospitals say they’re ready to go on hanging if they don’t seem to be paid the cash owed for placing their lives on the road.

“Miami Phil” may word the native industrial panorama features a statue of inspirational commerce unionist Mary Macarthur, who led the chainmakers strikes among the many Black Country’s lowest-paid employees in 1910. One of the marketing campaign’s slogans again then was “Be Anvil or Hammer”. They ended up doubling their pay.