YESTERDAY, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) opened the ballot for strike action by nurses in response to the Tory pay offer of a miserable 5% increase.
RCN members in the recent ballot rejected this offer, despite the RCN leadership recommending a vote in favour, and are determined to fight on for a double digit pay increase to at least match the massive cut in real-terms pay after years of Tory wage freezes and below-inflation pay awards.
Now, the RCN general council are calling for a yes vote for a new mandate for strike action.
RCN general secretary Pat Cullen, in a recent letter to members, said: ‘We aren’t just seeking a mandate to strike at individual NHS employers this time, we are seeking a country-wide mandate that allows for an even larger strike than we’ve conducted until now.’
Nurses are joining with junior doctors in their determination to take on the Tories in defence, not merely of their own pay, but of the very existence of the NHS.
Junior doctors will strike for at least three days every month over the summer after pay talks with the Tories broke down over the same paltry offer of a 5% pay rise.
The British Medical Association had been demanding a 35% pay increase and yesterday announced it was preparing to re-ballot its members to extend the mandate for junior doctors strike action after August this year. Under existing Tory anti-strike law, the mandate for legal strike action has to be renewed every six months.
At the same time, the BMA is balloting 40,000 consultants over a similar demand for a 35% pay increase to match the 35% cut in take-home pay.
What is clear, is that nurses and doctors are determined not to submit to the Tories in the fight for wages, and in defence of the NHS.
With the support of every worker they are defiant and eager to take on the Tories, while the Labour Party leadership are siding with the Tories in denouncing their pay claims as ‘unrealistic’ and ‘unaffordable’.
This week, Labour leader Keir Starmer spoke about Labour’s ‘vision’ for the NHS, a vision full of vague promises to bring down waiting lists and make the health service ‘fit’ for the future – but said nothing about increased funding.
Starmer was insistent that: ‘The money you need for the NHS will only realistically come if we’re able to grow the economy.’
As for nurses’ and doctors’ pay Starmer was just dismissive, saying: ‘On the structure of negotiations, we haven’t focused on that, to be frank, because what I’ve set out today is what we need to do to make sure the NHS is fit for the future.’
15 years of systematic pay cuts to NHS workers along with investment in the health system slashed to the bone are dismissed by Starmer who isn’t ‘focused’ on them and only wants to talk about ‘reforms’.
Workers know what reforming the NHS involves for both the Tories and previous Labour governments.
It means throwing the NHS open to private companies just as the Blair/Brown Labour government did with their Private Finance Initiative (PFI) that saddled the NHS with over £50 billion debt to the privateers, which is still being paid off by hospitals – a debt that Starmer has refused to commit to cancel.
When Starmer insists that ‘throwing money’ at the NHS isn’t an option he is merely parroting the Tories who insist that the health service will only get what a bankrupt British capitalist system can afford – which is precisely nothing.
Instead, with the economy diving into recession Starmer is assuring the bosses and bankers that their demands for cuts to public spending will be carried out faithfully by any future Labour, or coalition with the LibDems, government.
The working class is much more powerful than this collapsing Tory government or the treacherous right-wing Starmer Labour Party. The time has come for workers to force the TUC to stand with the nurses, doctors and in defence of the NHS, by calling a general strike to kick out the Tories and replace them with a workers government and socialism.
Only a socialist planned economy can provide a fully-funded NHS to meet the needs of all.
