Vital medical duties are delayed and patients are put at risk because of poor working conditions, according to porters at an Oxford hospital.

The John Radcliffe workers have been threatening to strike over a catalogue of problems since last week.

Now they are waiting for the results of a meeting between Unison union reps and their employers, Mediclean, before taking action.

The porters' complaints include:

**Poor pay and no extra for overtime

**Under-staffing which jeopardises special jobs, like transporting specimens and blood samples to labs and important equipment to wards

**Lack of training for duties including changing cylinders full of dangerous gases and alerting clinical staff when patients have heart attacks while in their care.

**The dangers of breaking up fights and attacks on staff.

One porter, who would not be named, said: "We are constantly short staffed which means urgent jobs are put back because we don't have the required amount of porters.

"We don't get trained by the hospital or Mediclean. I have been working here since 1997 and I still haven't had training, even though we are all expected to work with dangerous gases. Plus we have to hold cardiac bleeps for cardiac arrests, where people's lives are in danger if we fail to do our part correctly.

"All of the workers seem to be in favour of industrial action, but we've been advised to do it by the book."

The porters are paid 4.30 an hour by Mediclean, which is contracted by the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust.

No-one from Mediclean was available for comment.

ORH JR facilities manager Nigel James said: "We are talking to Mediclean about the situation and certainly with a whole load of issues there are obviously some that can be solved immediately and some that can't and Mediclean is addressing those.

"It's up to Mediclean to provide continuity of portering to the hospital and anything that threatens that continuity of service is a worry to us, but we hope that common sense will prevail."

A Unison spokesman confirmed that they were in talks with Mediclean.

She said: "There are a number of things that need changing and we are working towards sorting these out.

"We may still have to take action, but at the moment we are not considering this."