NURSES are to strike on Thursday 15th and Tuesday 20th December. At the same time CWU postal and RMT and ASLEF rail workers are taking part in strike actions to secure their jobs and to win wage rises that at the least equal the galloping inflation rate that is driving forward the current and deepening crisis of capitalism.
The essence of the economic and political crisis is that the Tory regime has decided to give the bankers everything that they want by driving down the standard of living of the working class, using the Ukraine war and the galloping rate of inflation to bring back 1930s living standards.
In this situation what the working class requires is a united class action, a general strike to bring the Tories down and bring in a Workers Government and a nationalised and planned socialist economy.
What is happening to rail and postal workers is that the government is refusing to meet with them and insists that they must accept what the bosses and the bankers are willing to offer them, which is the living standards of another era.
In this situation, the leaders of the NHS trade unions are appealing for talks with the Tories and even stating that they will cancel trade union actions to get such talks.
The head of the Royal College of Nursing has already said that the trade union actions may be called off if the health secretary negotiates ‘seriously’ over pay. ‘I won’t dig in if he doesn’t,’ general secretary Pat Cullen told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. However, the Foreign Secretary James Cleverley responded that it was not the government’s role to negotiate pay.
The RCN union is calling for nurses to be given a pay rise of 5% above the RPI inflation rate. But Cullen said her offer to negotiate was turned down five times.
She said her priority was making sure nurses could ‘make ends meet’, adding: ‘It’s not about lining their pockets with gold.’ However, it’s still too much for the employer.
Cullen urged the government to hold talks with her or negotiate through ACAS, the independent organisation which mediates disputes between employers and workers.
The government is not in the slightest interested in more talks. It wants to proceed to break the power of the trade unions in the UK so that British capitalism can return to its roots that is the most ruthless and brutal exploitation of the working class.
The Labour opposition has also spoken up. Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary made clear yesterday that he was supporting the Tories. He told The Sunday Telegraph that a Labour government could not afford the pay rises that the nurses are seeking.
He added, showing his rabid hostility to the BMA doctors organisation, that if Labour wins the election he would not hesitate to take on unions that were holding back the cause of patients.
Last week, in a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research he said that Labour would have gone further than the Tories in using private hospital beds for NHS patients. The Tories are set to take on and smash the nurses and a section of the Labour Party agrees with them!
The RMT must surely now grasp that the essence of the current situation is that the Tories are looking for a fight in order to bring in the harshest ever anti-union laws.
The RMT leader Mick Lynch wrote to Tory PM Sunak, ‘I’m writing to you to ask you to meet with me as a matter of urgency.
‘From the reports in the press, Mark Harper’s appearance at the Transport Committee and from what I have been directly told by the Rail Delivery Group’s negotiators, it is now clear to my union and the wider public that No 10 is directing the mandate for the rail companies and has torpedoed the talks.
‘There is no reason why this dispute could not be settled in the same way that RMT has resolved disputes in Scotland and Wales …’ There is however one great reason why the dispute is not being settled. It is that the Tories are set to bring in draconian anti-union laws and want to show the bankers that they can do a Thatcher on the working class by smashing and outlawing trade unionism, bringing in new draconian anti-union laws.
Lynch writes: ‘It is already a national scandal that your government has been paying the train operating companies not to settle the dispute, indemnifying them to the tune of £300 million so that they have no incentive to reach a resolution … ‘We have a duty to explore every possible option for settling this dispute and I’m willing to do my part. I hope you will agree to meet me.’ There is no meeting – what is required is surrender.
The Royal Mail is also at it – refusing to negotiate with the CWU. Even the most bureaucratic trade union leader can see that the time for talking is done, and that revolutionary mass action is what is required.
Workers must insist that Lynch and Co call an indefinite general strike to see that the Tories are brought down and replaced by a Workers Government and socialism.There is no other way forward!