SAMANTHA BOTTOMLEY, Leanne Heginbottom and Lynne Ambler all work as domestics at Calderdale Royal Hospital at Halifax in West Yorkshire.

They are among 400,000 workers employed worldwide by International Service Systems (ISS), a profitable Denmark-based multinational corporation making money out of the labours of its employees and out of publicly funded services across Europe, Asia and North and South America.

The three women are also the latest in a growing wave of “outsourced” NHS workers rebelling against their private-sector employers and fighting not only for NHS wages and conditions but also for their jobs to be taken back into the direct employment of the NHS.

They rebelled on Saturday afternoon by standing with more than 50 colleagues and supporters outside the main entrance of Calderdale Royal Hospital, brandishing placards, trade union flags and banners giving notice to ISS and their local NHS trust that they’ve had enough.

It was icy cold, but that didn’t matter. As they massed by the roadside there was a regular supportive cacophony of parping horns from passing traffic on the busy Huddersfield Road outside the hospital, bringing frequent cheers, applause and thumbs up from the protesting workers.

There was an even bigger cheer when GMB union activist Joe Wheatley ended a rousing speech with a warning to ISS and the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust which runs the hospital: “This is only the beginning!”

The Calderdale Royal staff hope to emulate the victory last week of the 1,800 workers at St Barts group of five hospitals in London where two weeks of strike action by cleaners, porters, catering workers and security staff persuaded the St Barts Trust to pledge to pay them NHS wages under NHS conditions when its contract with another profiteering and exploitative privateer, Serco, ends in April next year.

The workers at the rally also hope to repeat a victory closer to hand at the neighbouring Airedale Hospital in Keighley in West Yorkshire.

Last year, GMB members there employed by an “arm’s-length” company set up by their hospital trust to take over their jobs, won pay parity with directly employed NHS colleagues. And that was achieved by simply voting for strike action.

The St Barts workers were members of Unite. The Calderdale Royal campaigners are members of GMB. At Saturday’s rally the flags of GMB and Unite flew side by side in unity. There were local Labour councillors there in support and delegates from Calderdale Trade Union Council.

The exploitation of the Calder Royal workers by ISS is plain to see in their wages. They are paid the minimum wage of £8.91 an hour.

To make matters worse, bordering the municipal district of Calderdale in West Yorkshire are the districts of Leeds and Bradford. Equivalent staff at Bradford Royal Infirmary and Leeds General Infirmary are paid £10.19 an hour.

Never mind that even £10.19 an hour is pitiful. For ISS to pay the Calderdale Royal staff even less than their colleagues in neighbouring hospitals is scandalous, as the workers at the rally on Saturday were quick to point out.

“Unfair” was the word used by Sam Bottomley, who has been cleaning wards at the hospital for 17 years, all of them as an outsourced worker and for two of those years as a “key worker” during pandemic lockdown.

“It was alright when I first came, but now the holidays, the work they give you … If you do someone else’s work as well they don’t pay you extra,” she said.

Leanne Heginbottom, with nearly seven years at the hospital, was even more scathing. “We’re not having it,” she said.

Lynne Ambler is longest serving of the three women with almost 20 years of domestic work at Calder Royal behind her.

She remembers when all the staff were NHS employees.

“You used to get double time at the weekends under the NHS, time-and-a-half Saturdays,” she said. “We used to get proper sick pay. That was with the trust. Then we went over to ISS.”

Sick pay is now the statutory £96.35 a week. And because the first 28 weeks have to be paid by ISS, the company demands written evidence that the illness is genuine.

ISS doesn’t deny the shocking rates of pay received by outsourced workers it employs at Calder Royal. It defends them.

The conglomerate told the Morning Star: “We offer competitive levels of pay which are in line with industry and government standards — these are reviewed with our customers on a regular basis.”

The company went on: “The ISS team at Calderdale Royal Hospital are valued members of staff, highly regarded for the work they undertake which directly contributes to patient care every day.

“Their passion and commitment throughout the pandemic was unprecedented, highlighting the invaluable role that the facilities team plays in keeping a hospital running.”

So £8.91 an hour is a fair reward for “valued and highly regarded” workers with “unprecedented passion and commitment” for their jobs — workers who risked their lives to keep hospitals functioning during the pandemic.

When Wheatley quoted the company’s words at the rally on Saturday there was a groan of scornful laughter. But the cheers when he said “this is just the beginning” expressed more.