My name is Erica Rasheed and I am a security guard at Great Ormond Street Hospital. For the past year, I have been one of those key workers that keep the hospital running. Yet I am part of a small group of workers who are outsourced and on inferior contracts.

Like many of the people who turn up to work at the world renowned establishment, I am not originally from the UK, but from Portugal, and my parents from Angola and Mozambique before me. I came here to find a better life for me and my family, but also - like many others, I came to contribute to this country.

In 7 months time, I will give birth to my second child. I will do that at an NHS hospital and like many women across the country, I will marvel at this service which - as they say here - ‘free at the point of use’.

But this will be a bittersweet moment. Because for the past few months, my colleagues and I have been asking our bosses at the NHS to bring us in-house. We are doing this because as outsourced employees, we get worse pay, worse benefits, worse conditions.

What does that mean for me? It means that in 7 months’ time, when I have my second child, I can’t afford to stay with my newborn longer than the 6 weeks that the statutory maternity gives me. My NHS colleagues get to stay home for 5 months. They earn a whopping 2500 more during that time. From a woman’s perspective, this is what outsourcing looks like.

Last year, when the world woke up to the realities of racism, bosses at the NHS made nice sounding pledges about how to address ‘structural racism’. We security guards are mostly Black and Brown migrants. Our colleagues in-housed at the NHS are mostly white. If you ever wanted an example of institutional racism, look no further.

Going on strike is a last resort. I am calling on you all to sign this petition - because petitions work. They put pressure on people in power. Please sign it in solidarity in support of our strike.