socialist www.socialistresistance.net TWO DAYS of solid strike action by 300 mental health nursing and social care staff in Manchester have beaten back threats of privatisation, downgrading and job losses.
Staff whose jobs had been threatened will now be offered redeployment in community-based teams, rather than on wards. The threat of downgrading has been lifted.
The victory should set a new benchmark for resistance to cost-cutting measures which impact on staff and undermine patient care.
300 UNISON members had voted by over 9-1 for action, with official support from the union.
Their branch secretary, Karen Reissmann, said: "We showed management that we are serious. My message to every health worker whose job is under threat is that if you fight, you can win."
But despite this lead from Manchester, so far relatively few other sections of health workers have opted to fight back with industrial action, despite the scale of
There's a long waiting list to have
La go at Patricia Hewitt the cutbacks and other problems that are affecting almost every NHS Trust and Primary Care Trust across the country.
Indeed despite losing the media war and failing to convince any significant section of the public or health workers of their so-called "reforms", on the ground ministers and NHS management have been having it pretty much their own way, and the campaigns and trade union fightback have been very much localised www.keepournhspublic.com
Paul Box /reportdigital.co.uk WARD
departments (see page 6).
No. 43 March-April 2007 Marchers in Bristol on March 3: sustained local action is key to success and exceptional rather than the rule.
Since the current squeeze began, trusts have announced plans to axe 24,000 jobs - some of them through redundancy, others through not filling the vacancies that arise through "natural wastage", resulting in a chaotic pattern of understaffing that piles pressure and unpaid extra workload on remaining loyal staff.
With the unions offering little practical resistance at any level, much of the protest at local cuts has begun and continued outside of the hospitals with vigorous community campaigns - but these are not enough to save jobs or prevent downgrading of NHS staff.
But there have been significant victories for local campaigns: in Preston, angry campaigners have forced a partial retreat over the controversial use of private sector clinics to deliver outpatient and day-case treatmentpotentially bankrupting local NHS
In many other places hospital rationalisation and closure plans that should have been rubber-stamped at the www.healthemergency.org.uk
CONCORDE BRANCH UNISON Working a better together service end of last year, and beginning implementation now are still stuck in limbo, with managers now facing pressure to hold off until after local elections in May.
Some services that have been fought for have been rescued: those where there has been no opposition have generally been those to close.
The message is clear: campaigning works. But there is much more left to do - and if we want to keep the NHS intact we need to fight now to change the minds of this government, not wait until the next
Those wanting to defend the NHS need to combine tenacious and hard hitting local campaigns with pressure on the national trade unions and other organisations to link up the campaigns and call a national demonstration to pile more pressure on to ministers.
Manchester, Preston and other experiences show it is possible to win: and, like the lottery, the chances may be slim, but if you're not in it, you can't win it - so it's time to dig in and fight back.