\n<\/p>\n
Black cleaners at Great Ormond Street hospital were subjected to \u201cindirect race discrimination\u201d by the wait for NHS pay terms and conditions after their services were brought in-house, a tribunal has found.<\/p>\n
A case against the London children\u2019s hospital brought by 80 cleaners \u2013 the majority of whom are from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds \u2013 was dismissed by an employment tribunal in 2024.<\/p>\n
But in a judgment handed down this week in a four-year legal battle, the employment appeal tribunal (EAT) upheld their appeal against the original decision, accepting their claim that they had suffered discrimination in not getting NHS \u201cAgenda for Change\u201d (AfC) pay rates \u201cimmediately or shortly thereafter\u201d when their contracts were transferred in 2021.<\/p>\n
It is understood all staff have now been offered NHS AfC terms. If the hospital does not appeal further, the case is expected to move to discussions over financial remedy.<\/p>\n
Between 2016 and 2021, the cleaners were employed by OCS Group UK Ltd, which held the cleaning contract at Great Ormond Street.<\/p>\n
At the time their contracts were transferred they earned the London living wage of \u00a310.75 an hour, rather than AfC rates of \u00a311.50, and had inferior terms and conditions to staff directly employed by the trust under the national AfC framework, which governs NHS pay, pensions, sick pay, annual leave and other benefits.<\/p>\n
The cleaners, who are members of the United Voices of the World union and were represented by the law firm Leigh Day, argued that the situation placed Black and minority ethnic staff at a disadvantage compared with their predominantly white peers who had been directly employed.<\/p>\n
Petros Elia, the general secretary of United Voices of the World, said: \u201cFor too long, thousands of predominantly Black, Brown and migrant facilities workers \u2013 cleaners, porters, caterers and security staff \u2013 have been treated as second-class citizens. The EAT ruling confirms that forcing these workers to wait months or years for the pay and conditions they are legally entitled to is not just bad practice \u2013 it is unlawful race discrimination. The message to every NHS trust is clear: the era of two-tier workforces is over.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Leigh Day solicitor Aman Thakar said: \u201cOur clients have shown extraordinary resilience and determination in pursuing this case.\u201d<\/p>\n
Great Ormond Street hospital (GOSH) said it was \u201ccarefully reviewing\u201d the decision. A spokesperson added: \u201cOur cleaning and domestic services colleagues are valued members of our team at GOSH. This was a complex process, and we worked hard to harmonise staff into NHS employment quickly and in ways that worked best for individual staff.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Black cleaners at Great Ormond Street hospital were subjected to \u201cindirect race discrimination\u201d by the wait for NHS pay terms and conditions after their services were brought in-house, a tribunal has found. A case against the London children\u2019s hospital brought by 80 cleaners \u2013 the majority of whom are from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[713,15879,4663,118,578,1229,22388,3099,1276,1259],"class_list":{"0":"post-42491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-appeal","9":"tag-cleaners","10":"tag-discrimination","11":"tag-great","12":"tag-hospital","13":"tag-nhs","14":"tag-ormond","15":"tag-racial","16":"tag-street","17":"tag-win"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}