Security guards at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) are the last workers in their NHS trust who are outsourced to Carlisle, a company owned by a Tory donor. As a consequence of this, they don’t get full NHS sick pay or the same paid maternity leave as other hospital workers and even missed out on last year’s meagre 3% NHS pay rise. These predominantly black, brown and migrant workers taken over 50 days of strike action so far and made tribunal claims saying that this outsourcing amounts to indirect racial discrimination, with judgement on this imminent.

GOSH hasn’t engaged with the security guards or UVW at all during this dispute. It was moving and inspiring to hear testimony from other trade unionists about how they launched similar actions and managed to win the same terms and conditions of their NHS counterparts. It’s clear that there is a pathway to ending the scandal of outsourcing, which squeezes workers and services to make money for the people who hold these contracts.

I was proud to join GOSH workers on the picket line recently.