Emergency hospital opens in Docklands

By New Worker correspondent

A giant emergency hospital was opened by Prince Charles last week in London’s ExCel conference centre Docklands. The prince, himself recovering from a mild case of COVID-19, conducted the ceremony through a video-link from his Birkhall mansion on the Balmoral estate in the Scottish Highlands.

The 4,000 bed NHS Nightingale hospital was erected inside the cavernous ExCel centre in just nine days. Essentially a ‘field hospital’, it was built with the help of some 200 soldiers from the Anglian Regiment and the Gurkha Rifles, working long shifts alongside NHS staff and contractors.

The 87,328 square metres of double exhibition halls have been fitted out with the framework for more than 80 wards, each with 42 beds. Some 500 fully-equipped beds, with oxygen and ventilators, are already operational. The nearby City Airport, currently closed for normal flights due to the coronavirus plague, will be used by military planes to bring supplies and equipment to the hospital.

“It’s nothing short of extraordinary that this new hospital in London has been established from scratch in less than a fortnight,” NHS England Chief Executive Sir Simon Stevens told the media. “Now we are gearing up to repeat that feat at another four sites across the country to add to the surge in capacity in current NHS hospitals.”

Opened in November 2000, the ExCel Centre in east London was bought by the Arab-owned Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company (ADNEC) in May 2008. ADNEC was originally going to charge the health service some £2–3million per month for use of the site; but this provoked an angry response from Labour and the giant GMB union that has many members in the NHS and the ambulance service.

Labour Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said the deal was “an absolute outrage. Staff and patients will be disgusted at the billionaire owners. They should be prepared to offer the facilities for free”. And Lola McEvoy, a GMB organiser specialising in outsourced workers, said it was “simply wrong that the government could funnel cash to crown princes to deal with an urgent public health crisis while the future of low-paid outsourced workers hangs in the balance”.

In the end the owners soon backed down. ExCel chief executive Jeremy Rees said an initial agreement with the NHS to house the temporary Nightingale Hospital "included a contribution to some fixed costs" but "We have since decided to cover the fixed costs ourselves. The Excel London facility is fully available to the NHS and we are here to support all their needs and requirements during this crisis”.

This was repeated by Humaid Matar Al Dhaheri, the managing director and group chief executive of ADNEC, who said: “To be clear, profit has always been the furthest thing from our minds. It is our firm commitment that we will not charge a penny for the use of our facilities, and we will provide the NHS with the operational and logistical support it needs for NHS Nightingale London.”

Who guards the guardians…

By New Worker correspondent

 The lot of a security guard is never a happy one. In addition to having to deal with hours of boredom enlivened only by drunken yobs and frequently more dangerous criminals during unsocial hours in low paid outsourced jobs that are often precarious, particularly when one firm losses a contract to another.

            An example of the latter comes at the O2 Arena in Greenwich where a change of contractor means that 200 guards could lose their jobs. GMB has accused the departing contractor OCS of sabotaging rival company, Securitas, who have just won the contract. Normally staff working from the current provider would simply transfer over to the new company and see minimal change to their daily working lives.

This time round OCS is withholding the names of more than 200 of the current workforce in a bid to sabotage Securitas’ running of the contract. Roger Jenkins, GMB National Officer for the sector said: “Hundreds of dedicated security guards are being hung out to dry because of a corporate power struggle – it’s despicable.

“This is no way to treat the dedicated front line security we all rely on in terror attacks like the Manchester Arena and Westminster Bridge.

 In a similar case another “sore loser” security firm lost a big contract and had the nerve to charge workers more than £220 each as a parting shot.

In this case the villain is Amberstone, who recently lost the ASDA distribution security contract. To mark the occasion, in the last pay run before departing, and without notice, they deducted the cost of each worker’s vital Security Industry Authority licence from their final pay packet – up to £220 per person.

            This time Roger Jenkins said: “Amberstone’s leaving present to their hard-working employees was to line their own pockets and leave workers skint. Amberstone should hang their heads in shame. It is no surprise they lost this contract and the sooner they leave the security industry the better.”

             In yet another case GMB has attacked Churchill Security for demanding that their guards download spy software on their personal mobile phones to allow Management to track their locations and ‘update you of shift changes’.

             Churchill, which is based in Chorley, employs more than 160 guards across the country, including in Cardiff Bay, Cheltenham, Watford, Milton Keynes, Abingdon and London.

            Roger Jenkins said: “This is appalling behaviour from a company trying to play big brother to hard working security guards.

 “What they don’t need is employers making their job even harder, expecting them to download spy software onto their personal phones and tracking their every move.

            One might wonder why trade unions organising in the private and public sectors do not devote some of their time and energy to demanding that major employers at least bring their security in house.

Protest Picnic for Struggling Workers!

by Theo Russell

A GMB union ‘Protest Picnic’ was held outside Charing Cross hospital in West London on 4th July, in support of low-paid, privatised Sodexo support workers. Several members of the new Hammersmith, Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea Trades Council joined the protest, and the trades council banner was on display along with the local National Education Union (NEU) banner.

Over 1,100 cleaners and porters working for French multinational Sodexo at St Mary's, Charing Cross and Hammersmith Hospitals are being paid the National Living Wage of £8.21 per hour, whilst a minority of staff on the old contracts are paid £11.00. The GMB says that if you do the same work you should be paid the same wages.

In June the GMB organised three hospital protests at the NHS Imperial Trust; at Charing Cross in Fulham, St Marys in Paddington and Hammersmith Hospital workers were all involved in protests over wages.

The picnic protests include soft drinks, low music, pizza and cakes for the workers and their supporters.

Michael Dooley, the local GMB Union officer, told the protesters: "The general public will be surprised to hear that the staff in Charing Cross are paid only the minimum wage. Porters who care for patients and the deceased, cleaners who clean the blood, sick and other waste and the staff who keep the hospital moving 24 hours a day deserve more than the minimum wage.

"A picnic protest is a novel way of drawing attention to the plight of the staff working in Charing Cross Hospital, many staff are new to Britain and will appreciate the efforts by the union to get them involved in this after work protest.

"The protests are hoped to draw attention to the poor wages and obtain increases in pay rather than to go on strike at the hospitals, but the workers understand they may have to go on strike if their wages are not increased."