NHSBT Announces 467 More Redundancies

In the latest NHSBT business plan at least 467 more posts are being made redundant. In fact, 284 of these post have already been made redundant in the 2006/07 business year. Does this mean we are saving money? Not really as there are so-called non-recurring costs of at least £9 million to cover plans for the new strategy. These 'non-recurring' costs are set to be a 'significant' in the coming years which is an interesting use of the term 'non-recurring'.

The plan also mentions having the 'appropriate' management capacity in place to carry out the strategy. So far, this seems to be employing more managers at the expense of front-line staff.

Apologies for the lateness of this article. The plan was published on 17th May 2007.

TUC welcomes long awaited corporate killing law

Welcoming the news today (Monday) that the UK is to get a law on corporate killing, thanks to a last-minute compromise between the two Houses of Parliament, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:

'We are pleased that a sensible decision has been taken and the bill will now become law. Even though unions wanted the bill to make individual directors personally liable for safety breaches and penalties against employers committing safety crimes to be tougher, we hope it will mean the start of a change in the safety culture at the top of the UK's companies and organisations.

'The catalogue of avoidable workplace deaths in recent years has highlighted in stark terms the need for a change of attitude over safety in UK boardrooms. To make a real difference, we now need to ensure that this law is accompanied by a new legal health and safety duty on directors and a requirement on companies to report annually on their workplace safety culture."

Unions Welcome Rethink of Blood Service Cuts

Unions representing NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) workers have today welcomed the board's decision to think again proposals to cut 600 jobs and close seven* sites. The NHSBT board is asking interim MD, Clive Ronaldson, to carry out an overarching review of the proposed reconfiguration strategy.

Bill Campbell, Staff Side Secretary and UNISON's senior national officer for the NHSBT, said:

"The unions have put forward well researched and robust arguments why the current proposals to cut jobs and close centres should not go ahead,
This review makes good sense and will give stakeholders, including the
regulator, Department of Health, Trusts, staff and unions a fresh
opportunity to make their views known and influence the eventual outcome.

"Our prime concern is to ensure that any changes deliver a high quality
blood service and will not put lives at risk."

Staff Side Chair Owen Granfield from Unite Amicus said:

"The Board needs to look again at the impact of their proposals on the
service, environment and problems surrounding economies of scale.

"Building at Filton will still go ahead, but this new over arching review
is a positive step towards finding or long-term strategic solutions.

"We will be working jointly with the management team to find and implement
best practice at Filton to enable it to become a beacon of excellence."

Ends

Latest Newsletter

The July newsletter has now been published and is available on the branch website. Feel free to print and distribute this to your members.

New NHSBT Staff Blog

A new blog has been started, to fight against redundancies and closures in the NHSBT. The address is: http://nbs-sos.blogspot.com/.

The views represented on the blog are not necessarily those of the Unite (T&G Section) NHSBT Branch or those of Unite nationally.