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00:00Can I just introduce yourself if that's okay?
00:02Yes, my name is John Woods and I'm the Chair of the Portsmouth Trade Union Council.
00:05And what are we doing here today?
00:07Well, last Friday it was announced that 549 jobs at the Portsmouth Hospitals Trust are under threat.
00:12And we're horrified of the thought that NHS staff could be losing their jobs.
00:17We think the NHS effectively needs more staff.
00:20This is a decision that's come from central government.
00:22And Portsmouth is just one of many trusts which are going to be facing the job cuts as a result of deliberate decisions, political decisions by the government.
00:29We think somehow the NHS will be cut to pay for more weapons, for example, or because they've failed to put a tax on the super-rich,
00:38you know, the bankers and the millionaires, to pay for public services.
00:41So we want to show our opposition and say, can the central government think again?
00:45I think the government could probably say that in terms of the reason that they're doing these changes
00:50is they're trying to stream other projects to get more support and more funding to run other services.
00:54How would you kind of respond to that?
00:56Well, I don't think you do that by cutting jobs.
00:59Just simply by cutting the jobs doesn't mean that the work goes away.
01:02These are people, for example, who will back up the clinical staff,
01:05people who arrange appointments, people who arrange recruitment and retention.
01:08I mean, I think what's likely to happen is a recruitment freeze.
01:11There's likely to be voluntary redundancies.
01:13The workforce will be under even more pressure.
01:16People are already at, I don't know, huge pressure working in the NHS.
01:19This is not the way to do it.
01:20Sure, things need to change, but you don't do that by cutting jobs.
01:23Obviously, as you say, you're kind of almost protesting against the Labour decision,
01:28not necessarily against the NHS Trust.
01:30No, this is not about the NHS Trust at all.
01:32This is about central government.
01:33We wanted to make a point.
01:34And we were horrified since Friday.
01:36I haven't seen anything where anybody's saying, hang on a minute, 549 jobs.
01:40The impact on the NHS.
01:41Also, the impact on the local economy.
01:43I mean, Paulsworth, I'm not a rich city.
01:46More people unemployed.
01:47These are actually, you know, not the worst paid jobs in the world.
01:52They're reliable jobs.
01:53They're important jobs.
01:54Losing those jobs will have a big impact on the economy as well.
01:57Bye.
01:58Let's see.
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