Reject the deal – restart the strikes

Last week UNISON and UNITE's leaderships voted to call off NHS strike action in response to an offer from the government. The offer is outlined below and Jeremy Hunt's full letter to NHS Staff Council can be read here

If agreed the deal will:

• Abolish pay point 1

• A new minimum pay point of £15,100

• 1% plus £200 flat rate, both consolidated, for pay points 3-8

• 1% consolidated pay rise for all staff up to point 42 from April 2015

• An increment freeze in 2015/16 for staff on pay point 34 and above for one year.

• Urgent talks to take place with a view to the proposed redundancy changes being implemented from 1st April 2015, including a floor for calculation of redundancy payments of £23,000, and a ceiling for calculation of £80,000 with an end to employer top up for early retirement on grounds of redundancy.

What does this mean in practice?

This.... 

For the well behaved monkeys

Striking to win – use the NHS pay strikes to fight for the NHS

We're now heading towards our third national NHS strike. The decision by UNISON and GMB to call a further 2 days of strike action is welcome, and gives the strikes and the campaign to save the NHS a much needed boost.

The continuation and escalation of the action is a welcome break from the tendency to call off action which has plagued all unions the last several years.

However NHS workers are alone on strike among public sector workers. All the other public sector strikes taking place at the same time as the NHS dispute have been called off; schools, local government, civil service, universities and further education and the London Underground were all cancelled, despite ballots that were as good or better than the NHS unions.

So what is at work here? And what can NHS activists and trade unionist do to make the most of this period of action.

STRIKE for mandatory minimums

This is the text of a leaflet produced by the 4:1 Campaign for the NHS pay strike on November 24th. Download the leaflet here for printing and distributing on NHS picket lines.

The government’s pay cut is part of a determined policy to slash our salaries and reduce the cost of nursing in the NHS.  It is part of the same strategy to marketise and privatise our priceless NHS.  It is clear the government sees nurses as a cost to the NHS and not as a clinical resource with direct positive effect on patient outcomes and quality of care.  NHS Trusts are chronically under-staffed all over the UK, thousands of vacancies are left unfilled and Trusts are replacing qualified nurses with health care assistants, all with the intention of reducing their costs at the expense of patient care and outcomes.

It is time we took action to stop the erosion of our salaries but it’s also time we took action against the chronic understaffing, the constant poor care scandals and the exhausting and demoralising conditions nurses are working in.  We have taken the blame for poor care standards and have put up with atrocious staffing conditions for too long.  We need minimum qualified nurse to patient ratios and we need them to be made law.

A handy factsheet about immigrants and health tourism courtesy of the NHAP

A handy factsheet about immigrants and health tourism to help counter the UKIP lies:

Most immigrants who come here young, healthy, work+pay taxes. They pay in MORE than they take out: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/05/migration-target-useless-experts

Twice as many foreign visitors pay to use the NHS as exploit free health care: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/05/migration-target-useless-experts

UK is a net beneficiary of health tourism. Immigrants account for 4.5% of the population in England, but they are responsible for less than 2% of NHS expenditure: https://www.rsm.ac.uk/about-us/media-information/2014-media-releases/immigration-bill-will-pose-risk-to-public-health.aspx

Non-EEA migrants contribute 2% more in taxes than is spent on them, making them net contributors to the UK: https://www.rsm.ac.uk/about-us/media-information/2014-media-releases/immigration-bill-will-pose-risk-to-public-health.aspx

More British people get treatment abroad than foreigners get treatment here:http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/24/medical-tourism-generates-millions-nhs-health

Medical tourism generates millions for NHS and wider economy: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/24/medical-tourism-generates-millions-nhs-health

BMA warns income from charging migrants won’t even cover the cost of administration: http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/political/political-news/bma-rejects-plans-to-charge-migrants-for-nhs-care/20004087.article#.U86MZpRdWSo

Actual cost of health tourism = 0.06% of the total NHS budget: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/10/how-much-does-health-tourism-really-cost-nhs-its-not-%C2%A32bn

The NHS would collapse without immigrants – more than a third of registered doctors completed their primary medical qualification outside the UK: http://www.gmc-uk.org/State_of_medicine_Final_web.pdf_44213427.pdf

More than 5,000 nurses come to UK from EU, as training for home-grown staff has been cut: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/nhs/10828893/Number-of-foreign-nurses-up-50pc-in-a-year.html

Striking to lose – problems facing the NHS industrial action

Note: This article was written before the decision to call off local government strikes by UNISON, Unite and GMB.

The media is widely reporting the decision by NHS unions to stage the first strike over pay in 32 years. Contrary to the media reports, this action is not the result of widespread frustration over poor pay deals, but the fact that health unions finally decided to ballot their members for action, after 32 years of accepting pay deals. NHS staff have had 4 years of a pay freeze, and the 1% pay offer withdrawn by the government was only the latest in a long line of injustices heaped on NHS workers, including privatisations, cuts and scapegoating for the failures of government policy.

What is different now is the context; the NHS unions are facing both anger from their memberships, and a crisis of legitimacy. UNISON, UNITE and the RCN have presided over the wholesale destruction of the NHS at the hands of the Tory government. While UNITE has been willing to act oppositionally, backing community campaigns and local demonstrations, the leaderships of UNISON and the RCN have been completely acquiescent to the governments agenda, the RCN even collaborating with the government over the Health and Social Care Bill.

With this legacy behind them the, withdrawal of the governments pay offer forced the unions to ballot over pay in order to shore up their credibility, and maintain the appearance of opposition to the government after allowing their members to take a kicking for the last 4 years with no serious attempts at confronting the governments agenda.

Cameron’s plan for 7 day a week GP access is an empty populist pledge

Reaction to David Cameron’s pledge of 7 day a week GP access from co-leader Dr Clive Peedell  (below) and London GP, Dr Louise Irvine.

NHA’s Dr Louise Irvine, London GP and prospective parliamentary candidate for SW Surrey, the seat of Jeremy Hunt:

“This is utter nonsense. It is an empty populist pledge. Many of the pilot schemes that he claims have been a success haven’t even got off the ground, so where’s the evidence that they are effective?​

£100 million cannot even begin to make up for the loss of funding to maintain existing GP services never mind extending them to 7 days.

£100 million is about £2/person/year. For an average GP practice of 6000 patients that means an extra £12000 a year. For that the practice would have to be open 60% longer than currently (from 52.5 hours to 84 hours a week) and pay doctors, nurses and admin staff to be there. That would be approximately 1500 extra hours a year – £8 for every extra hour opened. That would not even pay for a receptionist for the surgery never mind the medical staff to provide the service.

This is a bad joke and shows how disdainful the Tories are of ordinary people and their health services. Instead of recognising and tackling the real crisis in general practice – not enough GPs, £1 billion of funding cuts to GP services over past 5 years and a recruitment crisis where young doctors are not choosing general practice and older ones are retiring early – Cameron is pretending that if you give a measly £100 million that will somehow sort the problems in general practice.

National Health Action Party - Support for NHS Strike

Statement from the National Health Action Party

Health workers in England are to stage a four-hour strike on 13 October, the Unison union has announced.Up to half a million NHS staff could take part in the strike action over pay, after being denied a 1% salary rise by the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, despite a recommendation by the independent Pay Review Body. It will be the first NHS strike in 32 years.

Statement from Dr Clive Peedell, co-leader of the National Health Action Party:

“We can’t run the NHS without suitable staff, we can’t improve the NHS without more staff, and we can’t recruit staff if pay keeps falling behind inflation and comparable jobs.

“The nationally agreed pay system established in the last decade is now under sustained attack. It’s outrageous that Jeremy Hunt has refused even a meagre 1% pay rise for many NHS staff. It’s also disingenuous to claim there has to be a choice between paying staff at agreed rates and inflicting savage cuts, especially when those cuts flow from the 5-year spending freeze brought in by his government.

“The fact that NHS staff have been driven to take strike action speaks volumes for the damaging, morale-sapping policies this government has inflicted on them.

For these reasons, we support this strike action.”