CONTRACTED-OUT security guards at Tameside Hospital in Greater Manchester have voted to strike for equal pay with their NHS colleagues in a dispute that shows what is wrong with Britain’s “crony capitalism.”

The guards work at Tameside — but they work for a multinational corporation called Engie. Thanks to both New Labour and Tory privatisation, many workers who run our public services are actually employed by the private sector: the big corporations squeeze their profits out of our NHS, our taxes and their work.

According to their union, Unison, the Tameside guards are paid less than NHS rates. Some are paid only the minimum wage rate of £8.72 an hour, or lower for under-25s.

The lowest rate for security staff employed directly by the NHS is £9.89 per hour. Taking into account overtime payments, most of the Tameside security staff are between £2,000 and £3,000 worse off per year, with one worker almost £6,000 out of pocket.

So they have voted unanimously to strike and will walk out on Monday, July 13 unless Engie settle the dispute. Or unless the hospital management — Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust — step in and force Engie to pay.

But who is Engie? It’s a French multinational, which is growing in Britain: when builder and outsourcer Carillion crashed, it could have been a chance for the country to admit a mistake and take some privatised public services back “in house” — instead, other companies are stepping in to take over, including French giant Engie.

Engie — formerly known as GDF Suez — is a French energy and engineering company. Engie also has a big “facilities management” arm which has been grabbing public-sector contracts for cleaning, janitorial and maintenance services. Since around 2013, Engie has had a strategy of expanding its public-sector work by taking over “facilities management” formerly run by other contractors like Balfour Beatty or Carillion.

With Engie looking for public-sector contracts and working in the highly regulated energy business, the French firm has been busy hiring former senior British public officials to help its expansion.

In November 2016 Engie hired Bob Kerslake, former head of the Civil Service, and Joan McNaughton, a Department of Trade and Industry director-general in the Blair years, to sit on its advisory or “scrutiny” board, which is chaired by former KPMG head Sir Mike Rake. Former Lib Dem energy minister Ed Davey also sat on this Engie board during 2016-2017. In 2016 David Cameron’s former national security adviser Lord Ricketts joined the board of the French parent company, Group Engie.

Getting people like Kerslake to sit on its “scrutiny board” buys Engie some good corporate PR, but does it actually help the workers?

Kerslake says in his latest report for Engie that “the scrutiny board’s purpose is to hold Engie UK publicly to account for the delivery of their Responsible Business Charter.”

So does paying good wages form part of this Responsible Business Charter? Well yes. And no.

Engie’s “responsible business charter” includes a commitment for “promoting the Real Living Wage.” But that is not the same as actually paying a real living wage. Instead it just means Engie should: “Provide 100 per cent of customers with the option to adopt the real living wage.” Engie doesn’t make a real living wage an essential part of their work, it just has it as an “option” contractors might want to consider.

Kerslake simply passes the buck on the “living wage commitment,” saying: “It is ultimately the commissioner’s decision to tender and award contracts which incorporate the living wage. In too many cases the purchaser is unwilling to fund this commitment.” Engie wins its business by pitching low-wage contracts, then blames the hospitals that “commission” it for the low wages.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Kerslake and all the members of the Engie scrutiny committee are paid well above the “national living wage.” They get highly paid so they can make excuses for Engie, so that it can simultaneously claim to be for the living wage and not pay it to its staff.

It is not surprising that Engie acts in a way that is slippery, if not downright dishonest. The firm has a history for it: in June 2018 the European Commission ruled Engie must pay €120 million in tax — Engie had unfairly avoided tax on income moved through Luxemburg in a breach of state aid rules.

The year before the French Competition Authority fined Engie €100m for uncompetitive behaviour in recruiting French gas and electricity customers. Both fines relate to the energy sectors, but is seems to me Engie are just as capable of acting in a less-than-straight way in other sectors.