Pennine Acute Stewards Lobby MPs Over 800 Job Losses

Date published: 10/05/2006

Shop Stewards representing all the unions at Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust will attend a nationally organised lobby of MPs in London today in order to protest against the massive cut in its budget that could see 800 job losses, although unions believe that the final figure could be higher if a high proportion of the losses occurs amongst part-time staff.

Pete Hinchliffe, trade union convenor for the Trust said, “The Trust have told us that they hope the losses can be achieved through efficiency savings and natural wastage. We hope they are right but 800 jobs represents almost 10% of our workforce. It is hard to imagine how this many posts could be axed without some blood being spilled. In any case, we lost 170 posts two years ago and many of our staff have been working under enormous pressures since then. To have this pressure increased more than fourfold is an intolerable situation.

“We feel that the present health minister should resign. As was evidenced at the Unison and RCN conferences earlier this month, she has clearly lost the confidence of health staff. In the meantime, the Prime Minister should step in to protect our Health Services. Our patients and the wider public cannot accept that dedicated health workers can be threatened with job losses on this scale. The North West has the worst health problems in the UK. We should be employing more health staff not sacking the ones we have.”