Week-long walkout over pensions starts at hospital

Hundreds of porters, domestics, catering and security staff at Airedale General Hospital have started a week-long strike.

The dispute relates to jobs outsourced to NHS subsidiary AGH Solutions, whose staff said they received lower pensions than those employed by the NHS.

AGH Solutions has said it had made "significant improvements" to its pay, terms and conditions and would work with the GMB Union to try to resolve the dispute.

A petition with more than 7,000 signatures was handed in on Friday for the attention of Foluke Ajayi, chief executive of Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital.

It asks for full alignment for all AGH Solutions workers onto NHS Agenda for Change pay, terms and conditions including pensions.

A series of walkouts last year resulted in what the union called "significant improvements" to bring the workers' terms and conditions closer to NHS standards, but its members are still calling for equal pension rights.

The strike is set to last until 26 January if an agreement is not reached, GMB said.

Joe Wheatley, GMB organiser, said about 100 people were not in work on Tuesday because of the strike.

"It's a simple demand - NHS pensions for NHS work," he said.

"There were improvements but we are still out because they are not good enough and they are not aligned to the NHS."

Blake Cooper, a medical engineer at the hospital, said the current situation was "incredibly unfair".

"It's not unreasonable that we say we just want equal pay for equal work and equal treatment for equal work," Cooper said.

Dennis Kentrop, managing director of AGH Solutions, previously said: "We value each of our employees, which is why, working with GMB, we have recently made significant improvements to our pay, terms and conditions offer to colleagues on AGH Solutions terms and conditions.

"Offering our own terms and conditions gives us the flexibility to continue to attract talented individuals and secure the technical skills required by the company."

He continued: "It also means that we can aim to provide a more flexible pension option compared to the NHS pension."

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