MEMBERS of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) will be angry that the historic vote by the overwhelming majority of nurses throughout the UK for strike action over pay and patient safety will not apply across the board in every hospital and NHS trust.
In fact, the vote was split by the RCN leaders across nurses at 311 NHS organisations with 178 returning a legally valid result in favour of strike action.
In fact, the legal validity of strike ballots, determined by Tory anti-union laws, is different across the UK.
In England and Scotland, it demands a 50% turnout of members with a majority of at least 40% in favour of striking.
Wales also has a 50% turnout for the vote but only a simple majority is needed, while in Northern Ireland only a simple majority of those voting is required with no minimum turnout required.
These laws, dating back to the Tory government under Margaret Thatcher and designed to end the right to strike, account for the fact that while the overwhelming majority of nurses voted in favour, strikes will be restricted to NHS trusts or health boards that have met the relevant legal requirements.
The RCN reported that: ‘Overall results show our members at the majority of NHS employers across the UK have voted to take strike action in their fight for fair pay and safe staffing,’ adding ‘many of the biggest hospitals in England will see strike action by RCN members but others narrowly missed the legal turnout thresholds to qualify for action’.
A divisive ballot producing a divisive result with the majority of nurses taking action, while a minority are to be forced to carry on as normal, brought about by the RCN obeying the anti-union laws.
This is a burning issue not just for nurses and NHS workers similarly being balloted by their unions for strike action but for the entire working class.
What is at stake in this struggle – against a Tory government that has declared that any pay increase above the insulting offer of about 4% must come out of further cuts to an NHS budget – is the very existence of the NHS. The greatest gain of the working class is under threat!
After a decade of Tory real-term pay cuts to nursing staff, they are being forced to leave in droves simply because they are unable to afford being nurses any longer. This situation has led to the RCN general secretary Pat Cullen warning that without enough staff, the NHS ‘is increasingly close to collapse’.
A collapsing NHS is exactly what the Tories have been working towards as they pave the way for a massive ‘reorganisation’ that opens the door to the private medical industry and insurance companies to step in and take complete control.
In the final three months of last year, 69,000 people were forced to pay for private medical treatment. This is the future the Tories have planned for every worker!
The Tories have been seeking to smash the NHS ever since it was introduced in the 1940s, hating a fully funded health service free at the point of delivery as an anachronism that has no place under a capitalist system that puts profit above the health of workers.
Obeying all the Tory anti-union laws that force divisive ballots leading to divisive strikes, will only weaken the fight by nurses for a pay rise sufficient to keep them from a life of poverty.
Equally, the trade union leaders keeping within the law which makes solidarity action illegal, means that the Tories have a free run at smashing the NHS.
Just messages of solidarity from trade unions to nurses in the front-line fighting for the NHS are not enough. Immediately, the unions must take real solidarity action by calling an indefinite general strike.
Workers must force the TUC to support the RCN, defend the NHS, by organising a political general strike to kick out the Tories and go forward to a workers’ government that will expropriate the bosses and bankers and bring in a nationalised and planned socialist economy.
Only socialism can provide all the funding needed to guarantee and expand the NHS to meet the needs of all workers and youth in the country.
Forward to the British Socialist Revolution!
