YESTERDAY Tory Health Secretary Barclay, who is refusing to negotiate with the NHS trade unions over NHS pay, accused striking nurses of putting patients’ lives at risk, when he is the one who is refusing to negotiate an agreement over nurses pay, after rampant inflation has pauperised many thousands of health workers and their families.
Speaking at the end of the Royal College of Nursing’s second day of strike action, RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive Pat Cullen, said: ‘With the end of today’s strike, a clock is running for the Prime Minister. There are two days for us to meet and begin to turn this around by Christmas. By Friday, we will be announcing the dates and hospitals for a strike next month.’
In fact it is the Tory government that is refusing to negotiate on pay, and has done to patients what Barclay has accused the unions of – ‘taking a conscious choice to inflict harm on patients.’
NHS bosses are warning patient safety cannot be guaranteed during the strike action, although unions have guaranteed life-threatening callouts will still be responded to by an ambulance.
In an article for the Daily Telegraph, Barclay accused ambulance unions of choosing to harm patients and making contingency planning more difficult.
Unison said it was ‘utterly shocked’ by the comments, while the GMB union said they were ‘insulting’.
Barclay later told BBC Breakfast that ambulance unions had chosen to strike at a time ‘when the system is already facing very significant pressure’ from increased flu and Covid admissions.
Asked who would be responsible for any deaths during the industrial action, he said: ‘It is the trade unions who are taking this action at a point of maximum pressure for the NHS.’
The unions rejected Barclay’s claims, with Sharon Graham, head of Unite, saying correctly that the blame for the strikes ‘lies squarely at the door of the government’.
She accused Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of the worst ‘abdication of leadership’ she had seen in 25 years, by refusing to negotiate on pay, after rampant inflation has ripped wages to pieces.
Christina McAnea, head of Unison, said the health secretary had in fact ‘never specifically asked Unison for a national contingency agreement’ and had acknowledged local unions had negotiated ‘detailed, appropriate plans for their areas’.
McAnea has previously said any deaths during the strikes would ‘absolutely’ be the fault of the government for refusing to open negotiations, and she is right.
Rachel Harrison, GMB national secretary, said: ‘Ambulance workers do the job because they care deeply for people. The government’s failings mean that they can’t.
‘We have tried everything to raise pay, the issue that is causing this dispute, but the government will not listen and will not talk. Ambulance workers – and the public – deserve better. The government needs to talk pay now.’
But the government will not talk, and is actually getting ready to knife the NHS and replace it with a privatised healthcare system, and new anti-union laws that will leave the poor to die in the gutter if they cannot afford to pay.
The government has much more important things to spend its billions on, namely the financing and arming of the right wing Ukrainian regime that it has spent billions on sustaining.
Tories slam the trade unions and the NHS. They insist that NHS trade unionists who want a wage rise to keep up with inflation and strike are killers.
Meanwhile they also insist that billions must be continued to be handed over to the Ukrainian regime, and that if this causes inflation on a worldwide scale, then workers should be proud of paying such an inflationary price.
To their disgrace, the TUC has stood by and just watched as the Tories hammer the NHS workers and spend billions on propping up the Ukrainian fascists. This is while poverty, homelessness and starvation are growing at record rates in the UK.
However the time has come for action and for the entire working class to support the NHS workers and their struggle to keep and improve the NHS and prevent a return to healthcare only if you can pay for it.
This means that unions such as Unite, Unison, GMB, PCS and the RMT must tell the TUC to call a general strike now!
There is not a moment to lose. The unions must convene a special meeting of the TUC general council to call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in socialism, by nationalising the banks and the major industries, bringing in a socialist planned economy. There is not a moment to lose! Join the WRP today!
