NHS and health

Health unions will stage a further four hour strike on 24 November in their ongoing pay dispute. If we do not win a decent pay settlement and build a union movement capable of defending our already much degraded terms and conditions, then we will have helped speed on the end of the NHS as a free state-of-the art health service. Since 2010 the NHS has been starved of £20 billion. By 2020 the gap between funding and necessary expenditure will be around £50 billion. But the current strategy of the unions is risible. So far the campaign has involved a four hour strike, four days of not doing...

Tory defector Douglas Carswell became UKIP’s first elected MP on 9 October, and another Tory defector, Mark Reckless, may win on 20 November in Rochester and Strood. We examine UKIP’s manifesto. UKIP: “Migrants are a drain on UK resources, including benefits and NHS” Solidarity: Researchers at University College London report that European migrants pay out far more in taxes than they receive in state benefits, a net contribution of £20 billion between 2000 and 2011. This is true for migrants from the “new” EU members such as Poland, Romania and Bulgaria as well as the “old” EU countries. Of 1...

After months of speculation and vague promises Labour's Clive Efford MP has published his NHS (Amended Duties and Powers) Private Members Bill. Was it worth waiting for? With the political limits of the Labour Party and the practical limits of what a Private Members Bill can achieve it was never going to repeal the 2012 Health and Social Care Act , nor reverse the cuts and privatisation of the NHS. But the Bill does tackle some of the worst bits of the Health and Social Care Act. Backed by the Labour leadership and supported by Unite, Unison and the GMB leaders, it’s an attempt to show Labour...

Health unions have announced a further four hour strike on 24 November in their ongoing pay dispute. Since 2010 the NHS has been starved of £20 billion. By 2020 the gap between funding and necessary expenditure will be around £50 billion. Last month the new Chief Executive of the NHS Simon Stevens made a spurious claim that with an extra £8 billion investment he could redesign the service and make £22 billion savings by 2020. If we do not win a decent pay settlement and build a union movement capable of defending our already much degraded terms and conditions, then we will have helped speed on...

If workers in the NHS (the area I work in) were able to get more insight into how we all respond to “authority” they would be better able to rely on their own skills and knowledge and be more assertive about resisting the current reforms. My argument (which could be extended to other workers) is that in order to do this it is vital we extend Marx’s micro analysis of the relationship between the worker and the capitalist in the light of advances in psychological theories and therapies. The nature of politics requires developing a forcefulness in response to the power of the capitalist system...

On 8 October, outsourced workers – cleaners, caterers, switchboard workers, seamstresses, porters and others – employed by ISS at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, South London, struck for the same pay and conditions as directly employed workers. To find out more about the dispute, visit their page on the GMB Southern region website . To make a donation to their strike fund, scroll down to the bottom of the page. Messages of solidarity and requests for more info to nadine.houghton@gmb.org.uk The workers are in talks with management and will be deciding their next course of action soon...

Tube cleaners employed by contractor ISS have returned to work, after a months-long lock out. Workers were locked out of work without pay for refusing to use biometric fingerprinting machines. ISS, which has a history of using immigration law against its mainly-migrant workforce, had openly admitted that the data collected would be shared with the UK Border Agency. The locked-out cleaners have been given a number of options, including returning to work on alternative contracts without biometric fingerprinting. Tubeworker called for a cleaners’ strike, voted for by ISS RMT members, to be called...

Two hundred GMB members employed by ISS at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, South London have voted for strikes to end two-tier conditions in NHS. The dispute is for the same pay rates, weekend enhancements and unsocial hours rates as the staff directly employed by the Trust. The GMB members are employed as cleaners, security, ward hostesses, caterers, on the switchboard and as porters. On 23 September GMB organised a protest outside the bondholders meeting of the PFI operator for the hospital. ISS workers, which includes cleaners, security, ward hostesses, caterers, switchboard operators...

On 21 September over 200 NHS campaigners from across the country gathered outside Labour Party conference in Manchester. We lobbied to demand Labour make serious commitments to rebuilding the NHS. Andy Burnham, shadow health secretary, was spotted going into the conference centre and persuaded to come speak to the crowd. Burnham confirmed his support for Clive Efford’s bill to parliament which seeks to remove the parts of the Tory Health and Social Care Act which force private tendering of NHS services. The bill, Burnham assured us, would return NHS run services to the position of being the...

Andy Burnham once again repeated his promise to “repeal the Tory Health and Social Care Act” if Labour win the next election. Burnham was speaking from the platform at the 6 September Trafalgar Square rally of the People’s March for the NHS. It is good that Burnham makes the promise to repeal the Act publicly, but it is not enough. When Burnham was Health Secretary under the last Labour government he backed the recommendations of Sir David Nicholson, the chief executive of the NHS, to make £20 billion “efficiency savings” by 2015. Burnham’s opposition to Lansley’s plans boils down to not...