Outsourcing in… hospital. Trade unionists protest against the transfer to an external company

Trade unions and medical students are against the transfer of some employees of the University Clinical Hospital in Wrocław to an external company. Outsourcing is to cover contractors of the so-called auxiliary services, i.e. cleaning and transport.

The University Clinical Hospital, which employs several thousand employees, announced a tender to entrust the so-called auxiliary services to an external company. It is about transferring the employment of over 500 people from USK to this external company. This includes orderlies, but also orderlies and stretcher bearers. The department of cleaning and hygiene, as well as intra-hospital transport, is to disappear from the structure of the USK.

Marcin Drozd, director of USK, wrote in a statement that after economic analyzes he decided to entrust auxiliary services to an external company.

“Thanks to this solution, we will save from PLN 18 to 20 million annually over the next four years. These funds will be returned to patients in full – in the form of shortened queues, more accurate tests, access to innovative therapies and greater comfort of treatment,” argued the director.

He assured that the basic condition for participation in the tender is to take over the employees of the hygiene department along with maintaining the existing remuneration rules and securing stable forms of employment. The company will guarantee the current wage conditions for one year and employment under an employment contract for four years.

Hanna Piaszczyńska, representing the National Inter-Enterprise Trade Union of Auxiliary Employees in Health Care, told PAP on Monday that the union's goal is for the hospital to withdraw from the outsourcing tender.

– We have serious doubts whether the cleaning company is able to ensure not only stability of pay and employment, but above all, the quality of services. We have no guarantee that we would maintain social benefits, such as remuneration for work on holidays or at night, the so-called holidays under a pear tree or for long service – said Piaszczyńska.

According to trade unionists, the main argument against entrusting services to an external company is the previous experience of other hospitals.

– In Wrocław hospitals at ul. Koszowa, ul. Grabiszyńska, and even in the so-called old USK clinics at ul. Chałubińskiego was outsourced and was abandoned because it did not meet sanitary expectations. There is Covid, we have appropriate training, knowledge and skills. If anyone thinks that they can come from the street and clean an operating or treatment room well, they are wrong, said the union leader.

Students of the Medical University of Wrocław are also against the changes, supporting the demands of non-medical employees and trade unions. They call for the tender to be withdrawn and the department to be left under the hospital's management.

“No savings should be achieved at the expense of patients' health and operational safety of the hospital. Previous examples of outsourcing in other Wrocław hospitals ended in failure for exactly this reason – the quality of the services offered decreased after they were transferred to external contractors,” the students wrote in a letter to the management.

They emphasized that as future doctors, nurses and midwives, students know well how much depends on the work of orderlies, stretcher bearers and other support staff. “These are key professions for the hospital's operation and we are concerned about the attempt to relegate them to the role of external employees,” the students added.

Marta Stożek, an MP from the Razem Party, also got involved in the matter and has already made two parliamentary interventions, demanding explanations from the hospital management and withdrawing from the tender. In September, trade unionists from Solidarity organized a protest in front of the facility. (PAP)

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