The Belfast Health and Social trust is looking to downgrade 120 medical secretary posts and make a further 50 redundant. It seems the claim that frontline services in the NHS would be protected from cutbacks where nothing more than a lie protracted by politicians. You cannot get anymore frontline than Medical secretaries who are the link between doctors and the public –cutting medical secretaries will have a massive impact on the health service, if there is no one to answer phones and make appointments how can patients expect to be treated?

Catherine Arkinson NIPSA joint branch secretary for health workers in Belfast Trust stated that staff are outraged by the decision of the trust. ‘The staff are highly disgusted. To say they are disappointed with the Trust would be an understatement. They play a key role in the health service and any cuts would not only affect medical secretaries but also the patients who rely on the health service’.

‘NIPSA have already organised a range of lunchtime protests at the Royal, Mater Hospital and outside Knockbraken this Wednesday , where the trust’s headquarters are’.

‘The trusts idea is to consider what the best cost is. This means saving money and cutting jobs not what’s the best journey for patients in care. NIPSA will be opposing the cuts in jobs and voluntary redundancies’.

Cutting services in the NHS is not only disgusting because its a service that people rely on when they are sick but it also does nothing to stave off the recession which is the reason we are told why the cutbacks have to be made. In actual fact cuts such as these make the economic situation worse because it consigns more people on to the dole queue meaning money is lost in taxes collected.

Through industrial action the medical secretaries have the power to halt these attacks and job losses, this is the only tool in which that all threatened job losses and any attempts to make workers pay for the crises can be defeated .