UNISON members working for NHS Logistics will take two 24-hour strikes over the next two weeks to fight the Labour plan to privatise the organisation on October 1st.
The first 24-hour strike will run from 10pm on Thursday 21 September at its five depots.
There is not the slightest doubt that the 1,000 UNISON members who will be involved in the action are fighting for the whole of the NHS and its workforce, and for the working class as a whole.
Labour has spent its second and third terms speeding up its drive to privatise the NHS, and hand the NHS budget over to big business.
This drive has now reached a critical point.
Earlier this week the new NHS boss, David Nicholson, said that up to 60 NHS hospitals would be ‘reconfigured’ in the period ahead before the next general election.
The changes could range from losing their accident and emergency, or maternity departments, to amalgamation or closure, as primary care trusts hand over their patients to care in the community, much of it to be offered by the private sector.
The Liberal Democrats also published research which showed that sixteen hospital trusts in England providing acute services are under strong pressure, which could lead to loss of services or even closure of some of their 27 hospitals.
Pressure on trusts is strongest in London and the south east where nearly one in four hospital trusts is facing serious pressures from financial shortfalls and competition from other parts of the NHS or private providers.
Immediately in the north west, an accident and emergency department at Rochdale Infirmary in Greater Manchester is to be closed, and will be replaced by an ‘urgent care centre’ dealing with less serious casualties.
It will mean Rochdale patients needing life-saving emergency treatment will use services at Fairfield Hospital in Bury, the Royal Oldham or North Manchester General Hospital.
In Yorkshire the Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Healthcare NHS Trust is to close two wards and axe up to 100 jobs in a bid to save money.
The whole of the NHS is now under a fierce attack, an attack which endangers the lives of all workers and their families in this country.
Last Tuesday at the TUC Congress a resolution was unanimously carried on the public services which ‘called on the general council to offer full support to the civil service and other public sector unions in the event of further industrial action to defend jobs and services against cuts, privatisation and offshoring.’
This decision must now be carried out by all the NHS trade unions, the TUC and all TUC affiliated trade unions.
The whole NHS must stop to fight privatisation alongside the NHS Logistics workers next Thursday, and all of the TUC affiliated trade unions must join the action with them.
Now is the time to drive the privateers Blair and Brown back.
September 21 must be turned into a one day general strike to demand hands off NHS Logistics and that the NHS privatisation programme is scrapped.
This action must be repeated on the day of the second 24 hour hour stoppage.
The bottom line is that if Labour goes ahead to privatise NHS Logistics on October 1st the TUC must reply with an indefinite general strike to bring down the Blair-Brown government to go forward to a workers’ government that will halt and reverse the privatisation programme and carry out socialist policies.
