NHS staff across three health trusts in Dorset are facing a major attack on their jobs, pensions, and pay, as nearly 1,300 workers—including porters, housekeeping, catering, and estates staff—are threatened with transfer to a private subsidiary company (SubCo). This move, driven by the University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust, is a clear step towards privatisation, set to happen as soon as September.
1,300 NHS staff in Dorset set to have their jobs privatised
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Unison, the largest public sector union in the UK, has fallen short in its duty to back these workers with genuine collective action.
As World Socialist Web Site reported, during a recent Zoom meeting held for NHS workers in the area, union leaders failed to present any solid plan to stop the outsourcing and instead urged members to write letters to MPs and hospital boards.
Promises of protests, work-to-rules, or strike action that were floated in earlier discussions have been quietly shelved.
Gareth Drinkwater, Unison Branch Secretary at the University Hospitals Dorset Trust and chair of the meeting, pleaded with workers:
If you are not a member of a union, my desperate appeal is for you to join Unison. We need you to. This will give us the best chance of stopping these changes going ahead.
Yet, this appeal rings hollow when no real campaign is underway, and industrial action is ruled out unless membership hits 100%, a practically unachievable target.
Laurie Hackney, a local Unison organiser, echoed this stance:
A strike is a last resort. If it comes to a strike or protest or mass gathering, we need as close as we can get to 100% because we cannot do it half-cocked. Any kind of collective action requires more members, numbers.
Bowing down to corporations and the government
But this excuse ignores the union’s immense resources. Unison claims over 1.2 million members nationally, with more than half employed in the NHS, and reported an income of over £185 million last year. Yet they claim that holding a strike ballot in Dorset is “expensive,” even though they spend around £80 million annually on bureaucracy and expenses.
This approach exposes a pattern of betrayal: instead of fighting privatisation and cuts in the National Health Service, the union bureaucracy consistently collaborates with management and the government.
Their track record includes accepting pay caps, freezes, and below-inflation increases that have slashed the real earnings of NHS workers over the past 15 years. In 2018, a deal negotiated by Unison helped cut sickness enhancement pay and dismantle incremental pay progression, while falsely promising to boost morale.
The unions were equally complicit during the COVID-19 pandemic’s darkest days. Over 1,500 health workers died—many due to shortages of personal protective equipment—while unions like Unison stood by and enforced government policies that prioritised “herd immunity” over workers’ safety.
Now, with Labour’s health secretary Wes Streeting pushing further NHS privatisation and job cuts, including the expansion of SubCos, unions like Unison remain silent or, worse, willing collaborators.
The NHS sell off continues apace
Last week’s meeting failed to address the Labour Party’s role in accelerating the creation of these private subsidiaries, which began under Tony Blair’s government in 2006 and have only spread under Conservative governments.
By 2019, over 65 NHS Foundation Trusts operated or were planning SubCos, where staff face lower pay, loss of NHS pension rights, reduced unsocial hours pay, and minimal employer pension contributions.
Keir Starmer’s Labour government insists that NHS trusts create these subsidiaries as part of “efficiency savings,” refusing to allocate necessary extra funding. Streeting has criticised what he calls a “begging bowl culture,” pushing staff to accept worsened conditions to help plug funding gaps.
Unison’s response in Dorset—to encourage polite engagement with management consultations and to channel frustration into writing letters—does nothing to protect hard-working NHS staff. This simply legitimises cuts and privatisation disguised as consultation, while failing to empower workers to organise real resistance.
Many NHS workers in Dorset and across the country desperately need more than empty promises and bureaucratic inaction. The call from campaign group NHS FightBack is for workers to boycott management-led briefings, organise independently through rank-and-file committees, and unite nationally to fight privatisation not with letters but with strikes and collective action.
NHS: take action
The message is clear: SubCos are not just administrative changes but a direct assault on jobs, pay, pensions, and working conditions for NHS staff. The failure of union leadership to lead a genuine fight against these attacks leaves workers vulnerable to the ongoing dismantling of the NHS.
NHS workers across Dorset and beyond are encouraged to come together to defend the health service, day in and day out, and speak out against the ongoing privatisation that threatens their livelihoods and the care patients receive.
The time for safe words and timid tactics has passed; it is action and solidarity that can make a difference.
Featured image via the Canary
