100 signatures reached
To: MP's, local Councillors, Northampton General Hospital Trust Board.
Northampton General Hospital Pathology staff locked out.
Allow Pathology Staff back into the building to work and enter into meaningful negotiation to end this dispute.
Why is this important?
Biomedical Scientists working in the Pathology Department at Northampton General Hospital have been involved in a bitter year long dispute over changes to their shift patterns and payments.
This involved plans to sack and re-engage them resulting in payments for out-of-hours being slashed by 80% and a doubling of night time shifts.
Consequently Unite members voted to take industrial action, short of strike, at 00:01 on Thursday 26th June. However, when the 78 Biomedical Scientists turned up for work at 9am they were barred from entering the workplace unless they were prepared to sign that they would not participate in industrial action. They have been 'locked out' since and Unite has accused the hospital Management of a disgraceful abuse of power in retaliation for the laboratory staff exercising their legal right to take industrial action.
Currently the service is being provided by a handful of poorly trained locums and non-laboratory based managers with many tests being out sourced to other laboratories. The cost of this may reach up to £1 million a year and the staff believe the service is no longer safe.
Unite is calling on the Trust to abandon it's bully-boy tactics and to sit down with ACAS to settle the dispute.
