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Last Updated: Feb 18th, 2008 - 14:39:01 |
LONDON (Reuters) - Hospitals in England face a second 24-hour strike starting on Tuesday in protest against the transfer of the National Health Service's medical supplies unit to German courier company DHL.
The walkout by up to 900 members of public service union Unison starts at 10 p.m. and will continue throughout Wednesday, coinciding with a debate on the health service at the Labour Party conference in Manchester.
Unison General Secretary Dave Prentis will call for a halt to privatisation in the NHS and a new strategy for dealing with debt in the health service.
On Monday the union bought full page advertisements in national newspapers to support its campaign, under the banner "Don't let private investors tell the NHS how to operate".
Prentis told a fringe meeting at the conference that NHS staff morale and patient confidence were being undermined by the government's radical NHS reforms and by job cuts made to meet budget goals.
"If the government doesn't change direction then we will not win a fourth term," he said.
The strikes are the first nationwide industrial action to hit the NHS for 18 years and come as the government pours record amounts of cash into the service in England.
But the introduction of market-style competition between hospitals for patients and a crackdown on overspending has been fiercely criticised by medical bodies and unions.
Earlier this year Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt was booed and heckled at a conference of nurses angry at job cuts and recruitment freezes.
"Don't pick a fight with the people Labour needs to win again," Unison delegate Wendy Nichols told the Labour Party conference on Sunday.
Unison is protesting against the transfer of around 1,650 staff from NHS Logistics and the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA) to DHL, a subsidiary of Germany's Deutsche Post, on October 1 under a government plan unveiled earlier this month.
The union said it had enjoyed solid support for the first 24-hour strike at NHS Logistics' five depots across England last week.
The Department of Health said its contingency plans for the first strike had worked well, with no reports of supply problems.
NHS Logistics was established in 2000 to source and deliver products ranging from food to bedding and medical equipment to hospitals, doctors' surgeries and other NHS organisations.
The government says the NHS will save 1 billion pounds under the 10-year contract with DHL by expanding the range of products supplied.
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