Greens Support Hospital Porters

Oxfordshire Green Party is supporting industrial action by hospital porters against threatened cuts to their incomes. 

Alison Williams, Deputy Chair of Oxfordshire Green Party, explains:

“Oxfordshire Green Party, its Councillors ,General Election candidates, Larry Sanders, Ann Duncan, Ian Middleton, Mark Stevenson, Kate Prendergast and Stuart McDonald, and members wholeheartedly support action the portering staff and members of UNISON may have to take to reject the proposed cuts in their pay and changes to their conditions. These are both unacceptably detrimental to the NHS and to people who work in the NHS.

“We recognise that some firms including Carillion have benefited from increasing their profits by providing privatised NHS services. The management of Carillion should recognise that essential health services and all the associated support work within the NHS should not be subject to their proposed changes at the John Radcliffe Hospital which will be detrimental to those who work in the NHS and those who use the service. We call upon Carillion to withdraw these current proposals.”

Ann Duncan, Green Party Candidate for Oxford East, comments:

“I fully support industrial action the portering staff and members of UNISON may have to take to reject the proposed cuts by Carillon in their pay and changes to their conditions. This is what the creeping privatisation of the NHS means to the lives of the most hard-pressed working people in Oxford. I am disgusted by the injustice of this kind of treatment of the lowest-paid at a time when MPs are getting an 11% pay rise and bankers are rewarding themselves £ millions.”