TENS of thousands of nurses and ambulance workers across England walked out yesterday at the start of two days of strike action.
Members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), joined with members of the GMB and Unite unions in what is the biggest strike action in the history of the NHS, demanding a pay increase following thirteen years of pay freezes imposed by the Tories which have resulted in real-term cuts in pay of up to 20%.
Nurses and NHS workers have had enough of subsisting on poverty level wages that have seen them relying on food banks and led to thousands leaving unable to survive the intolerable conditions imposed on the health service by successive Tory governments.
All this anger has come to a head in this unprecedented strike. This anger has been driven to the point of explosion by the absolute refusal of the Tory government to even go through the motions of talking to the unions about pay.
Every attempt by the leaders of the trade unions to get the Tories to meet to discuss pay has been rejected with contempt.
On Sunday, the Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham stated clearly that Tory Health Secretary Steve Barclay was ‘not telling the truth’ when he claimed there is a dialogue between the government and unions over pay, and that neither Barclay nor Rishi Sunak were prepared to meet unions to discuss pay.
Yesterday morning, RCN general secretary Pat Cullen told ITV’s Good Morning Britain programme that it is ‘weeks since I have heard from anyone in his (Sunak’s) government, knowing today and tomorrow is happening.’
GMB national secretary Rachel Harrison said that her members had been forced to walk out as there had been no meaningful dialogue for a month with the government, adding: ‘The NHS is crumbling, people are dying and this government is dithering.’
The Tories aren’t ‘dithering’. They are consciously preparing for an all-out war on workers and their unions, blaming the working class for inflation.
This was made clear by Tory Chancellor Jeremy Hunt speaking after the Bank of England raised interest rates on February 2nd to 4% to try to curb rocketing inflation.
Hunt insisted that increasing public sector workers’ wages would mean ‘high inflation is entrenched for longer’ saying ‘the Bank is very clear that wage pressure is one of the risks that cause inflation to stay around.’
He insisted: ‘We will talk to the unions about absolutely anything except things that will mean inflation is entrenched for longer.’
This is driving the categorical refusal to even meet to discuss pay, despite the offer from the union leaders to call off strikes if only the Tories get round the table over wages.
There will be no talks, but a class war waged by the Tories on behalf of a bankrupt British capitalist system crashing into recession and being strangled by inflation.
The working class is not responsible for inflation or the economic crisis, but the Tories and capitalist class are determined that it should be made to pay for it.
What is clear, is that no amount of pressure in the form of one or two days of strike action, no matter how powerful, is going to force the Tories to move an inch over pay for nurses or any public sector worker.
Driving down their pay to poverty levels, for the Tories and the bankers, will be the means of suppressing the wages of workers in every industry and business.
The working class is increasingly demanding that its unions take real action by ending all talk of pressurising the Tories and get on with the real job of calling a general strike to bring them down.
An indefinite general strike to kick out the Tories and bring in a workers government that will nationalise the banks and major industries under the management of the working class, bringing in a planned socialist economy, is the only way forward for workers and young people today.
Only the Workers Revolutionary Party is fighting for this policy and perspective.
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