Safeguarding the Future of the NHS

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

Safeguarding the Future of the NHS

Letter to the Editor:
A Warning about the Future

Longshoremen to Close Ports on US West Coast to Protest against War

Report from WDIE correspondent at Unison Conference

Unison Health Care Services Group Conference is being held in Manchester from April 14-16. In the opening speech, Lillian Macer Chair of the Service Group Executive   praised the union’s fight against privatisation and pinpointed successes that had been achieved over the last year in reducing the number of Independent Treatment Centres that the government had approved, and congratulated Grampian health workers in bringing back a PFI hospital under public control.  She said that health care was “not a commodity that can be bought and sold in the UK” and encouraged the union to carry on its programme of work against the privatisation agenda.

            In a debate that followed under the Keeping the NHS Working campaign, the motion adopted called for a continued campaign to defend the founding principles of the NHS and build “widespread support to safeguard its future”.  During the debate the campaign to abolish prescription charges which has been successful in Wales and Scotland was adopted across the country.   It was pointed out that health care is a fundamental right that people should receive on the basis of need and without charge.

            Moving onto Primary Care, conference recognised that the government’s privatisation agenda had shifted to Primary Care with the “commissioning” culture and commissioner/provider split.   The motion on this gave the union’s view that “the long term future of the NHS can only be safeguarded, which Lord Darzi says that he would like to see,   by a reversal of the privatisation agenda which has best the NHS for the past decade”.   

            Conference continued the debate for the first day with motions on the campaigns against the outsourcing of administrative and clerical staff and of patient transport services. There were composite motions in support of in-house, well-staffed and fully equipped domestic services.

            The closing debate was on Equality and Diversity to tackle racial discrimination in the health service. 

           

Report from Unison News

“It’s our watch, our turn to look after the NHS.” That was a clear message brought to Unison’s health conference in Manchester by East Midlands delegate Norman Wilson.

            And it was a challenge eagerly taken up by delegates as they set out a programme of action to build on the union’s Keep the NHS Working campaign and defend and celebrate the NHS in the year of its 60th birthday.

            They voted to:

• highlight the successes of the NHS;
• mark the 60th anniversary with ‘a series of events and activities;
• continue to campaign to “defend its founding principles and build widespread support to safeguard its future”;
• congratulate Wales and Scotland on abolishing prescription charges, making healthcare truly free at the point of need, and campaign for this to be extended to England and Northern Ireland.

While welcoming recent changes, such as the scaling back of plans for private ‘independent sector treatment centres’, conference noted that primary care is “the new frontier for private health care”, as service group executive speaker Pam Barr said.

            Delegates also recognised that “a successful campaign relies on the ability of branches to recruit and organise in primary care and work in partnership with wider coalitions on local, regional and national activity”.

            The other big challenge facing the NHS, and Unison’s campaigns around it, is the Darzi report, which “should be an opportunity, but is also, undoubtedly, a threat”, executive speaker Nick Holden noted.

            Speaker after speaker agreed, pointing out a glaring contradiction between the vision for the NHS outlined in the report and the strategy of marketisation and privatisation outlined to achieve it.

            Delegates recognised a welcome shift in tone in the report, with more emphasis on partnership and collaboration to safeguard the future of the NHS as a public service, free at the point of use.

            But, conference warned: “A shift in tone is not enough. The long-term future of the NHS can only be safeguarded … by a reversal of the privatisation agenda which has beset the NHS for the past decade.”

I would like to commend WDIE for the article on Jaguar (April 7, 2008), giving a warning to the workers about the future.

The workers must indeed deliberate on the direction of the economy and the role these multinational monopolies play. The deliberations amongst the workers have to be in the context of their historical experience with these monopoly capitalists. The perspective of being the decision-makers in determining how secure and sustained these businesses and markets become and making sure that they fit in with a modern socialised economy is part of the social consciousness process that the workers go through. Taking a lead in ideologising the Jaguar situation allows Jaguar workers to take part in opening up the space for the alternative as part of the workers taking centre stage. The workers cannot sit back and allow the situation to develop over their heads but must engage in the conversation of how the nature of their being can become transformed if they act and take part in the unfolding events as they occur in the company. If the workers do not sufficiently engage in the discussion and organise and act upon what their consciousness informs them, then the same kinds of problems will re-occur as before or even worse still. Investigation into their condition on a continuous basis will inform their decision-making as opposed to being disinformed, and, being based on unified actions of a conscious organised collective, will also provide a strong counter-measure to arbitrary monopoly decisions. 

Reader from the West Midlands

Jack Heyman, San Francisco Chronicle, April 10, 2008

While millions of people worldwide have marched against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and last week's New York Times/CBS News poll indicated that 81 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction – key concerns being the war and the economy – the war machine inexorably grinds on.

            Amid this political atmosphere, dockworkers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have decided to stop work for eight hours in all US West Coast ports on May 1, International Workers' Day, to call for an end to the war.

            This decision came after an impassioned debate where the union's Vietnam veterans turned the tide of opinion in favour of the anti-war resolution. The motion called it an imperial action for oil in which the lives of working-class youth and Iraqi civilians were being wasted and declared May Day a "no peace, no work" holiday. Angered after supporting Democrats who received a mandate to end the war but who now continue to fund it, longshoremen decided to exercise their political power on the docks.

            Last month, in response to the union's declaration, the Pacific Maritime Association, the West Coast employer association of shipowners, stevedore companies and terminal operators, declared its opposition to the union's protest. Thus, the stage is set for a conflict in the run up to the longshore contract negotiations.

            The last set of contentious negotiations (in 2002) took place during the period between the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the invasion of Iraq. Representatives of the Bush administration threatened that if there were any of the usual job actions during contract bargaining, then troops would occupy the docks because such actions would jeopardise "national security". Yet, when the PMA employers locked out the longshoremen and shut down West Coast ports for 11 days, the "security" issue vanished. President Bush then invoked the Taft-Hartley Act, forcing longshoremen back to work under conditions favourable to the employers.

            The San Francisco longshore union has a proud history of opposition to the war in Iraq, being the first union to call for an end to the war and immediate withdrawal of troops. Representatives of the union spoke at anti-war rallies in February 2003, including one in London attended by nearly 2 million people, the largest ever held in Britain. Executive Board member Clarence Thomas went to Iraq with a delegation to observe workers' rights during the occupation.

            At the start of the war in Iraq, hundreds of protesters demonstrated on the Oakland docks, and longshoremen honoured their picket lines. Without warning, police in riot gear opened fire with so-called less-than-lethal weapons, shooting protesters and longshoremen alike with wooden dowels, rubber bullets, pellet bags, concussion grenades and tear gas. A UN Human Rights Commission investigator characterised the Oakland police attack as "the most violent" against anti-war protesters in the United States.

            And finally, last year, two black longshoremen going to work in the port of Sacramento were beaten, Maced and arrested by police under the rubric of Homeland Security regulations ordained by the "war on terror".

            There's precedent for this action. In the '50s, French dockworkers refused to load war materiel on ships headed for Indochina, and helped to bring that colonial war to an end. [Another precedent is that of British dockworkers who, as part of the “Hands Off Russia” campaign, refused in 1918 to load a munitions ship, the Jolly George, destined for Russia to make war against the revolutionary government. – Ed. WDIE] At the ILWU's convention in San Francisco in 2003, A.Q. McElrath, an octogenarian University of Hawaii regent and former ILWU organiser from the pineapple canneries, challenged the delegates to act for social justice, invoking the union's slogan, "An injury to one is an injury to all." She concluded, "The cudgel is on the ground. Will you pick it up?"

            It appears that longshore workers may be doing just that on May Day and calling on immigrant workers and others to join them.

*Jack Heyman is a longshoreman who works on the Oakland docks.