RCN NURSES from King’s College Hospital in south London marched from their picket line to the Camberwell Abellio bus garage yesterday, to bring greetings and to unify the two struggles for higher pay against the Tories.
Then the Unite bus drivers marched up to and joined the nurses pickets outside King’s College Hospital, in a show of unity and strength, to great cheers.
Bus driver, Olu Sonure, said: ‘I am supporting the nurses strike because as a bus driver I believe we should fight together.
‘Prices of food and everything has gone up, so wages should go up as well.
‘The directors are getting double and triple their own salaries as increments, and we are getting peanuts from them.
‘They are making millions and nothing is coming down to the drivers who produce that wealth.
‘I agree that the Trades Union Congress should be organising a general strike to defeat the government and their plans to ban strikes and give private companies the right to sack anyone who strikes.
‘That is uncalled for. It is not right at all.’
Nurse Anna said: ‘It’s good to see that the bus drivers support us. We should join together and just paralyse the country.’
Clinical Nurse Specialist Royce said: ‘It is important for everyone to participate in these strikes.
‘We have had so much stress from this government, and we are not taking this. Enough is Enough.
‘We need the collective effort of everybody and definitely the TUC should be organising a general strike.
‘We are not going to be heard if we don’t have a united fight.’
Nana Nthembu, ward nurse said: ‘Unity shows strength and if we are united we can always defeat the government.
‘The Tories need to be defeated by all means. Oh yes! Definitely I support the call for a general strike. We are going to Downing Street no matter what.’
After marching to the bus garage the RCN spokesperson said: ‘It’s brilliant to be out here supporting the Abellio bus workers today.
‘You need a pay rise. Nurses and Health Care Assistants need a pay rise so our struggles are linked. It’s good to be here all together.’
The Unite Abellio representative Joe said: ‘Thank you very much for coming down and supporting us today. We are so pleased. We have a massive gathering again on strike days.
‘We have also got support from RMT, USDAW and Unison and of course the RCN.
At the moment we are hoping to get some new talks on pay next week.
‘We have got the Netherlands Shareholders as Abellio is a Dutch Company, coming over for pay talks. As of now the ball is in their court, because they refuse to deal with the issue over here.
‘But I have to say as our strike action takes place we here are, “All as One”. We are hoping to do marches ourselves to Downing Street or perhaps through London.
‘At the moment we are standing on picket lines at all six garages and we have had great support from the beginning.
‘The last vote was 1,137 out of all garages to reject the deal.
‘We said “No”, so we are still very strong on this, and hope you are as well.’
Alex from Unite Community said: ‘It is very important that we strike together because I think this government has to be brought down.
‘No one should be settling until we all are settling.’
