MONDAY is the anniversary of the founding of the National Health Service (July 5th 1948) and Johnson’s Tories have marked the event by refusing proper pay rises to nurses, midwives, NHS staff and doctors. There are protests outside hospitals up and down the country today (Saturday) over the way that NHS staff have been treated.
Any day now, the NHS pay review body (NHSPRB) is to make recommendations to the government on pay awards for nurses, health professionals and other NHS staff. However, the government have already announced that they are intent on offering NHS staff a zero per cent pay increase, in other words a pay freeze, and the nurses a 1% pay ‘rise’. With inflation on the rise they are offering a real-terms pay cut!
To mark the anniversary of the creation of the life-saving NHS, Johnson’s Tories are attempting to force NHS workers into pauperism.
As it is, the NHS is desperately understaffed, with NHS Digital reporting that in the second quarter of 2020-21, 10% of full-time equivalent registered nurse posts were vacant. This means NHS England is now 36,655 nurses short.
During the height of the pandemic, four out of five intensive care consultants believed shortages of doctors and nurses left their unit too stretched to provide the best possible treatment to very ill or dying patients.
NHS workers are currently doing the job of two or three people, working 12-hour shifts. These are workers who put their lives at risk. And the risks were intensified by a lack of the most basic of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE). There was such a lack of gloves, masks, aprons, visors and goggles that many NHS workers went to DIY shops like B&Q in their lunch break to buy their own.
Nurses were even pictured in the papers forced to make their own aprons out of bin bags! This is what the Tories inflicted on the NHS and NHS staff.
While the majority of the population were in their homes isolating, NHS workers were frontline in the battle against the virus. The NHS workers, as we all know, treated the infected, held the hands of the dying, and had to deal with the infected dead.
Over 1,000 NHS workers paid the ultimate price, themselves getting infected and succumbing to the virus and dying. Last April, Johnson himself was at death’s door with coronavirus, in intensive care, on oxygen at St Thomas’ Hospital in central London.
After recovering, he praised NHS staff, lauding them as ‘heroes’, pushing the ‘clap for carers’ every Thursday evening. A year later, rather than rewarding the NHS staff for spearheading the campaign to beat the virus, Johnson has condemned NHS workers to further poverty, and as rents soar, the threat of eviction.
NHS staff are paid so poorly, some nurses are being driven to use foodbanks to put food on the table.
After 11 years of cuts to the NHS, the shutting of maternity and children’s wards, the axing of A&E departments and the closure of entire hospitals across the UK, the current ‘offer’ of a pay cut is the final straw.
Furious nurses marched again and again demanding a 15% rise. Their union the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has put aside a £35 million strike fund, and vows that when the NHS pay review body publish their recommendations, it will ballot for strike.
The British Medical Association (BMA) has now followed suit. The BMA says it will ballot its members for industrial action if there is not a figure nearer 4%.
The battleground is set and it is going to be fought out over the NHS. Unison, GMB and Unite, who represent NHS staff, must back the RCN and BMA in an all-out strike to defend the NHS.
In fact, the entire working class must be mobilised through the TUC for a general strike to defend the NHS. This action will bring this government down in days, if not hours, and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
A workers’ government will pay all NHS staff the wage they deserve. Such a government will immediately re-open all closed departments and build new hospitals up and down the country.
Socialist policies will be implemented to reinstate free education for all so that a new generation of NHS staff can be trained up, developing the NHS with all the advances of medical science for the future. This is the way to mark the 73rd anniversary of the NHS.
MONDAY is the anniversary of the founding of the National Health Service (July 5th 1948) and Johnson’s Tories have marked the event by refusing proper pay rises to nurses, midwives, NHS staff and doctors. There are protests outside hospitals up and down the country today (Saturday) over the way that NHS staff have been treated.
Any day now, the NHS pay review body (NHSPRB) is to make recommendations to the government on pay awards for nurses, health professionals and other NHS staff. However, the government have already announced that they are intent on offering NHS staff a zero per cent pay increase, in other words a pay freeze, and the nurses a 1% pay ‘rise’. With inflation on the rise they are offering a real-terms pay cut!
To mark the anniversary of the creation of the life-saving NHS, Johnson’s Tories are attempting to force NHS workers into pauperism.
As it is, the NHS is desperately understaffed, with NHS Digital reporting that in the second quarter of 2020-21, 10% of full-time equivalent registered nurse posts were vacant. This means NHS England is now 36,655 nurses short.
During the height of the pandemic, four out of five intensive care consultants believed shortages of doctors and nurses left their unit too stretched to provide the best possible treatment to very ill or dying patients.
NHS workers are currently doing the job of two or three people, working 12-hour shifts. These are workers who put their lives at risk. And the risks were intensified by a lack of the most basic of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE). There was such a lack of gloves, masks, aprons, visors and goggles that many NHS workers went to DIY shops like B&Q in their lunch break to buy their own.
Nurses were even pictured in the papers forced to make their own aprons out of bin bags! This is what the Tories inflicted on the NHS and NHS staff.
While the majority of the population were in their homes isolating, NHS workers were frontline in the battle against the virus. The NHS workers, as we all know, treated the infected, held the hands of the dying, and had to deal with the infected dead.
Over 1,000 NHS workers paid the ultimate price, themselves getting infected and succumbing to the virus and dying. Last April, Johnson himself was at death’s door with coronavirus, in intensive care, on oxygen at St Thomas’ Hospital in central London.
After recovering, he praised NHS staff, lauding them as ‘heroes’, pushing the ‘clap for carers’ every Thursday evening. A year later, rather than rewarding the NHS staff for spearheading the campaign to beat the virus, Johnson has condemned NHS workers to further poverty, and as rents soar, the threat of eviction.
NHS staff are paid so poorly, some nurses are being driven to use foodbanks to put food on the table.
After 11 years of cuts to the NHS, the shutting of maternity and children’s wards, the axing of A&E departments and the closure of entire hospitals across the UK, the current ‘offer’ of a pay cut is the final straw.
Furious nurses marched again and again demanding a 15% rise. Their union the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has put aside a £35 million strike fund, and vows that when the NHS pay review body publish their recommendations, it will ballot for strike.
The British Medical Association (BMA) has now followed suit. The BMA says it will ballot its members for industrial action if there is not a figure nearer 4%.
The battleground is set and it is going to be fought out over the NHS. Unison, GMB and Unite, who represent NHS staff, must back the RCN and BMA in an all-out strike to defend the NHS.
In fact, the entire working class must be mobilised through the TUC for a general strike to defend the NHS. This action will bring this government down in days, if not hours, and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
A workers’ government will pay all NHS staff the wage they deserve. Such a government will immediately re-open all closed departments and build new hospitals up and down the country.
Socialist policies will be implemented to reinstate free education for all so that a new generation of NHS staff can be trained up, developing the NHS with all the advances of medical science for the future. This is the way to mark the 73rd anniversary of the NHS.
