CROWDS turned out to show their solidarity with striking hospital workers at a ‘Defend the NHS’ rally in Bradford.

It was held as more than 300 staff who work in the estates, facilities and clinical engineering departments at the Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which includes the Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI) and St Luke’s Hospital, enter a second strike against plans to create a ‘wholly-owned subsidiary company’.

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The union fears the transfer will strip workers, including porters, domestic and security staff, of the protections they have as NHS employees.

The trust has denied it is privatising services and says the new company is the “best way of continuing to provide high quality care for patients”.

The two-week strike began on Thursday.

Shakeelah Suleman, 38, who works in the ward hospitality team in the catering department and has been at the BRI for 22 years, said: “We enjoy working for the hospital, we’ve all worked here for a very long time and we like working for the Trust. We don’t want to be privatised, we want to stay with the NHS.

“I feel like we will be sold off.”

She added: “Striking is not easy - that’s our livelihood - we are losing out a lot of money. But we’ve all come here and showed how strong we are and united we stand.”

Irene Hughes, 50, works as a domestic at St Luke’s.

“Unless they [the Trust] can tell the future, which no-one can, they can’t promise us anything,” she said. “Even if they shelved it for a year, to look more into it, but they just seem so adamant that this is the way they want to go forward - and it won’t stop with us.”

Addressing the crowd, Tony Pearson, regional organiser for Unison, said: “We’ve got the Trust management trying to maintain services and really, I worry about the public health hazards - they are not coming to us. We’ve said that we would provide emergency cover in emergency situations, yet very, very worrying things are happening in the hospital and these managers just seem to be prepared to put up with it.

“They will not win, because the people of Bradford and the trade union movement, will not let them win.”

Imran Hussain, Bradford East MP, who has spoken out against the plans alongside his fellow Bradford Labour MPs Naz Shah and Judith Cummins, slammed it as a “blatant injustice” and urged the Trust to to “stop this madness”.

He told the crowd: “This is how privatisation starts - if we don’t stand up today, it will start like this and go down a slippy road where free at the first point of use will no longer apply.”

Sandra Shannon, Deputy Chief Executive of Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “During this industrial action our number one priority is to make sure that we provide safe and effective care to the patients of Bradford and that’s what we are continuing to do.

“It is challenging but we deal with emergencies every day and our job is always the same: to keep patients safe. Clinical staff; including doctors, nurses, therapists and other healthcare support workers are continuing to work as normal.

“We completely refute claims that there are any public health hazards in our hospitals.

“A number of our own staff continue to work and we also have specialist teams of security and cleaning staff on site. Our team of infection control nurses is overseeing cleaning procedures to maintain safe standards.

“Contingency plans are in place throughout our hospitals and a senior group of doctors, nurses and hospital managers are meeting regularly, to review arrangements and ensure the safety and care of our patients.”