UNIONS representing NHS workers have written directly to the Tory government over their pay.
The fourteen unions represent over a million NHS workers. The fact they have approached the government directly, by-passing the pay review body, is a new development in the class struggle.
They rightly insist the Tories have undermined the role of the ‘independent’ pay review body and severely restricted its ability to make recommendations.
As a result of this, the unions say that they are ‘seizing the initiative and going directly to the government’. This is a matter not just for NHS workers but for every worker in this country. We all rely on the NHS from the cradle to grave. The Tories are strangling the NHS and pauperising NHS workers, and it will take the strength of the entire working class to defend both.
The scene is being set for a settlement of accounts between the working class and the Tory regime. The NHS is an issue that the working class must not give an inch on. There will be no major concessions from the government, and NHS workers must not be left to fight alone.
In the letter, written directly to Tory Chancellor Hammond, the 14 unions call for him to put aside funds to cover the cost of a pay rise in line with inflation at 3.9%. The unions also call for £800 as a one-off payment to each and every worker.
They explain that while pay has been frozen, or held at 1%, inflation over the last ten years has risen by such an extent that the million health workers which they represent have suffered a real-terms pay cut of at least 15%. They are crystal clear that the pay rise that they are demanding must not come out of money already allocated to the NHS. It is must be new money set aside in the budget. They will not tolerate a situation where any pay rise is offset with even more cuts and closures to departments and equipment across the NHS.
The Tories must not be allowed to say that, to pay NHS workers more money, the NHS will have to be run down and staff cut. While unions at the TUC conference last week were discussing ‘coordinated strike action’ across the public sector over pay, the government moved to create division. They used the old tried-and-tested imperialist tactic of ‘divide-and-rule’ offering to give police officers a 1% rise plus a 1% bonus, with prison officers getting a 1.7% rise – both funded out of existing budgets.
The prison officers’ union (POA) rightly declared their opposition to the move, firstly because of its divisive nature and secondly because any pay rise, the government made clear, will be offset by further cuts.
It was the POA who in 2012 at the TUC conference moved the resolution for the TUC to ‘consider the practicalities of a general strike’. This is a resolution which was passed unanimously. The fact that it has not been acted upon, and was then scrapped, shows the bankruptcy of the TUC leadership.
Now, however, we are on the brink of a great struggle. The time has come for the major trade unions to tell the General Council of the TUC that the NHS workers must not fight alone, and that the trade unions will not stand by and watch the NHS being cut to pieces by the Tories.
The TUC must be made to send a letter to May and Hammond telling them that if they force the NHS workers to take strike action over wages, then they will find themselves facing all of the trade unions in an indefinite general strike.
This action will be supported by all workers, who have seen their wages cut, the health service slashed and safe and secure council housing turned into a Grenfell Inferno, by massive deregulation and profiteering.
When a million health workers are forced out in a united struggle over pay, the entire working class must come out, not just to defend them and the NHS, but to see that the struggle is won in just hours, by revolutionary mass action!
It is definitely not a question of waiting for a Labour government and hoping they will make life a bit better under the boot of capitalism. It is a question of all unions taking action with the NHS workers, to defend the NHS and to bring down the Tories.
The Tory government must be replaced by a workers government that will expropriate the bosses and the bankers, nationalise the building industry and build a socialist Britain that will play its part in encouraging the workers of the EU to replace it with a Socialist United States of Europe.
