Unite Call Rallies Hospital Protesters
Posted on: Saturday, 19 July 2008, 00:00 CDT
THE UK'S biggest union has issued a rallying cry ahead of a protest march to try to save services at a crisis-hit hospital.
Unite is calling on all its members in Yorkshire and the north east to join the thousands expected to march on Bridlington Hospital on Saturday July 26 in protest at plans to close the cardiac monitoring unit and two acute medical wards at the site.
The Independent Reconfiguration Panel, which advises the Health Secretary on contested proposals for health service change, is due to report to Alan Johnson on the issues at the end of the month - and Unite said the march would be a timely reminder of public opposition to the plans.
The cash-strapped Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, has also been criticised for trying to recruit finance staff - with combined salaries of about Pounds 450,000 - while there was known to be a shortage of nurses.
The Yorkshire Post revealed two months ago how the hospital had just one nurse covering a ward over a bank holiday weekend.
And earlier this month, Unite said it had written to the Strategic Health Authority highlighting "grave concerns" about the running of the hospital after the trust announced it had been forced to briefly close the 29-bed Kent ward because of staff shortages and sickness.
The Trust - which only shelved plans to axe a third of its workforce last year when the SHA agreed to suspend the bulk of its historical debt of Pounds 12m - welcomed its fifth chief executive in six years when Christine Green took over from the departing Iain McInnes recently.
In one of the union's strongest condemnations yet of the situation at Bridlington, Dave Fleming, Unite's national officer for health, described the various crises as "a dreadful indictment of the frightful management that has brought a fine hospital run by excellent staff to the point of collapse".
(c) 2008 Yorkshire Post. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Yorkshire Post
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