lary services - catering, domestic and laundry. One survey suggested 80% of ancillary workers in London were black or from ethnic minorities.
But ancillary staffs have been decimated by privatisation. NHS numbers employed fell by 90,000 (40%) in the 1980s, with many forced into part-time working: hours worked were cut by almost 50%.
Thousands of ousted ancillary staff were forced to work for the cheapskate cowboy firms which took over after offering hospital bosses the lowest tender price. As a result they lost job security, holiday pay, pension rights, sickness benefits and often union If wars, starvation, environmental devastation, exploitation and injustice make you angry...
Black nurses, whether SRNs, SENs or NAs have tended to wind up working in the less attractive areas of the NHS, caring for the elderly, the mentally ill, or working nights and unsocial hours. Black nurses once qualified find it harder to gain promotion.
And black nurses also lost out under the 1988 'clinical grading' exercise which set pay levels for each job. In one area, 70% of the appeals lodged by the unions came from black members: appeals are still being heard.
Black staff in post often find little support from an overwhelmingly white NHS management structure. All of the Chief Executives and 98% of the directors of the 57 men. Community Recruitment Officer.
Fi service Union Britains Heal first-wave Trusts were white, most of them The new Trusts are not bound by previously negotiated equal opportunities agreements, not obliged to publish any monitoring of the ethnic breakdown of their staff.
An example of the kind of problem that can arise was the case of Anita Ceesay, a black NUPE member employed by the Royal London Trust, who was sacked for "professional misconduct' after responding to racial abuse from a man later arrested and prosecuted. Months later a vigorous local campaign secured her reinstatement - just as the Trust opted to save money by sacking its A similar episode cost Hounslow health authority £27,000 in compensation after they suspended a black health visitor who complained of racial discrimination, then sacked him for complaining to his MP.
Even now some areas of the NHS remain largely white enclaves. According to an inquiry into the London Ambulance Service, only 50 (1.8%) of its 2,700 staff are black or from ethnic minorities.
But information on NHS racism is depressingly sparse. Health unions persistently fail to monitor and campaign on problems as they arise. Here is an urgent task for black members' groups.