NURSES and other NHS workers have been offered a three-year pay deal worth 8% by the government.
NHS trade union leaders who are prepared to recommend three-year pay deals that amount to eight per cent, when even the current RPI inflation rate is 4.1 per cent, are doing their members a great disservice.
Especially when we are dealing with a government that has just handed some £150bn to the Northern Rock and other banks without even a blush, and has hastened to add that it will provide more if the banks need it.
There is no such tender loving care for the NHS workers, who are in no way responsible for the rampant inflation that the crisis of the bankers has created.
With the capitalist crisis out of control, and rampant inflation ahead, any wage deal for longer than a year, without a proviso that wages will automatically rise and be indexed to inflation during that year, is a sell-out.
Assurances from the employer and the government that if inflation gets out of hand there can be new negotiations are worthless. Inflation is already out of hand and the real value of wages has to be defended.
The Royal College of Midwives is dead right not to recommend this rotten three-year deal to their members.
In fact the likelihood is that the NHS workers will chuck this lousy deal out, since anyone who goes shopping knows that foodstuff prices are already rocketing upwards. When gas and electricity prices, rail and bus fares, and council taxes and petrol prices, and increases in mortgage interest rates are taken into consideration, a one-year deal, index linked to inflation, is what is required.
If the Brown government says that it cannot afford this then the obvious must be pointed out, that the sky is the limit as far as cash for the bankers is concerned and that there is one law for the rich and another for the working class and the poor.
The Royal College of Nursing welcomed the offer, with its leader Peter Carter saying: ‘We have long argued that fair pay and decent conditions are vital to keep experienced nurses in the profession’.
The completely blinkered Carter said the deal was better than expected and that ‘Nurses can now focus on doing what matters most, delivering high quality patient care, safe in the knowledge they have some degree of security over their household finances in the coming years.’ He must be joking.
Karen Jennings, head of health for the public sector union Unison, said the proposed deal set a new minimum wage for NHS workers of £6.77 an hour, and gives more money to nurses, midwives and paramedics stuck at the top of their grades.
She more cautiously said: ‘We will be asking our executive to consider recommending this deal to members as a well-balanced package.’
Sharon Holder, GMB National Office, commented that, ‘GMB members working in the NHS will now be consulted on this new pay offer.’
She added: ‘GMB is particularly pleased to see that this year’s award will be honoured by the Government in full and will not be staged if the members accept the offer.’ The reality is that nobody even dares to predict what the inflation rate will be in three years’ time. This is why the members will reject it.
In fact, the trade unions must draw up their own cost of living index and not depend on the rigged CPI and RPI cost of living indexes that the government specialises in using.
There must be a one-year deal and an agreement made that every three months wages are increased by the same percentage that the trade union cost of living index rises.
This is the minimum that the working class must have to prevent poverty and the pauperisation of working-class families.
If Labour is not willing to do this then it must be brought down and replaced by a workers government that will be prepared to defend the well-being and the interests of the working class and the middle class.
