NHS and health

The "bubbly concrete" (RAAC) scandal is a product of 13 years of deliberate Tory neglect

In September 2021 thousands of healthworkers launched an indefinite strike at Charité and Vivantes, two of Berlin’s large municipal hospitals. So began the Krankenhausbewegung - Berlin’s Hospital Movement. After a month, they won. A year later, nurses in the UK underwent their own industrial awakening, as the Royal College of Nursing balloted for nationwide strike action over pay. The differences between the disputes could not have been more stark, as a series of obstacles — some erected by anti-union laws, others by their own union — combined to defeat the UK nurses, despite overwhelming...

Doctors, members of the British Medical Association (BMA), are demonstrating more fight over pay than most public-sector workers. Both to show determined action can win workers real improvements, and to shore up our tottering health service, their fight demands active support. BMA junior doctors in England struck again on 11-15 August for “pay restoration” to real-terms 2008 levels; they are now reballoting under the anti-union laws for further strikes (till 31 August). Consultants (senior doctors) in England struck on 20-22 July and will strike against 24-26 August. Join the picket lines at...

British Medical Association junior doctors will strike again 11-15 August and consultants (senior doctors) probably on the 24th and 25th, demanding real-terms pay rises as steps towards “pay restoration”. There are also rumblings about a possible GPs’ strike. NHS radiographers, who have their own union, struck on 25 and 26 July — their first ever national strike — and may strike again. Junior doctors, who make up about half the hospital doctor workforce (consultants are 40%), have already struck for 13 days since March. As socialist junior doctors have argued in Solidarity , however, the...

Rishi Sunak said the government would raise money for pay rises by 'significantly' increasing charges for migrants

On Monday 10 July Tory chancellor Jeremy Hunt, alongside Bank of England chief Andrew Bailey, assured City plutocrats at a Mansion House dinner that he would hold a hard line against public sector wage claims. He said that was to damp inflation. In fact, conceding to the school workers, the doctors, the rail and Tube workers, and others, would cost a tiny part of the government’s budget. Even if it led to a bigger government deficit, its effect on inflation would be impossible to calculate, and small anyway. And that effect could be reduced to zero, even notionally, by covering the rises from...

Junior doctors in England will stage the biggest doctors’ strike ever seen in this country on 13-17 July (ending 7am 18 July). This will be followed by consultants (“senior” doctors in hospitals) striking on 20-21 July. They will organise “Christmas Day” emergency cover. The doctors have called on the government to talk through the official conciliation service ACAS, and ACAS has volunteered that it’s up for that, but the Tories refuse talks unless the doctors first cancel their strikes. In Scotland the BMA junior doctors’ committee is recommending acceptance of what BMA deputy chair Emma...

After three more days of strikes in June to reverse long-running real-terms pay cuts, junior doctors in England will strike for five days this month — 13-17 July. In Scotland they will strike for the first time 12-14 July. The Telegraph reports that the pay review body covering doctors has recommended a 6% rise, plus an additional £1,000 (a pay increase, not a lump sum, it says) for junior doctors specifically. A leading British Medical Association (BMA) junior doctor activist who spoke to Solidarity was sceptical the Telegraph has got it right. Even if it has, and even if the government...

The Royal College of Nursing's strike ballot closed on 23 June with a 43.4% turnout. The ballot was aggregated across the whole of England, rather than NHS Trust by NHS Trust, which means that in spite of an 84% yes vote in favour of strike action, the union has not met the 50% threshold needed to renew its strike mandate. There will be no more strikes by RCN members in this year’s NHS pay dispute. Unite still has a mandate for strike action, but it is one of the smaller unions in health, and its ability to sustain a dispute on national pay without other unions is very limited. After the RCN...

Junior doctors fighting over pay held three more days of well-supported strikes on 14-17 June, with lively picket lines and a march and rally of 1,000 in London. Among NHS workers fighting for a pay rise, junior doctors have so far waged the most determined campaign, both in terms of clarity of demands (they are clear they want a real-terms increase and a timetable for “pay restoration” to 2008 levels) and the number of strike days. But as a junior doctor centrally involved in the dispute explained in Solidarity 676 last week, the current level of action — three days a month, with more of the...