Continue reading »]]> Since my hospital have announced cuts, I have noticed staff and myself have been put under immense pressure to work way beyond our normal duties. understandably, we all want to have a job, but at what cost. Feelings of if you dare to  say no you may loose your post  have lead work colleagues to feel, victimized, bullied, stressed due to being over worked.

At times I have heard what I observe to be threatening language; suggesting colleagues could be sacked if they are not getting on with there boss etc; using the word ‘sacked’ implies workers wouldn’t even get made redundant and that they would be sacked in order to get rid of numbers. this of cause would keep the cost down for businesses…..

I believe  most colleague’s don’t mind working a little bit extra in these tough times if it means they have a job; but no one should be exploited by doing so. With the help of IWW and their advice; I was able to find my voice and and action my rights.

Nursing Assistant, South East England

Continue reading »]]> New’s from Unison’s medirest strikers:

We are not going to go away

This newletter looks at the achievements so far and what happens next. Unison Medirest members at Amersham and Wycombe have had a number of successful strikes and remain determined to continue the action. The dispute has united the workforce and cut across national and cultural divisions. The dispute has a high national profile and has been widely supported, as demonstrated by the £17000 raised for the branch hardship fund. We continue to recruit and maintain our membership and have a healthy hardship fund for further action.

The Campaign Continues

Quite rightly people are asking what has happened and what have we achieved so far. Medirest and the Trust, now recognise how determined members are and that this issue won’t go away. They hope that by keeping quiet and not talking to the union, members will go away and the unions resolve will diminish. This issue won’t go away, but we need to recognise that this has entered into a struggle of who will buckle first. Medirest members have shown that they are prepared and solid in taking strike action and we will do so again at a time we choose. We now need to prepare for a long term struggle and to help with this we will be looking to hold meetings of members to discuss our strategies and tactics. At the stewards meeting on Friday the following actions and ideas were agreed:

• A monthly Medirest newsletter and monthly meetings to keep members informed and involved
• Talk to new members of Medirest and get them involved in the Union
• The Stewards are to attend five day training courses
• Meet with Southampton and discuss closer working including lobbies of Medirest/Compass
• Organise a Bucks wide rally open to all and invite to the next day of action
• Hold an evening social for all branch and family members
• Continue to raise dispute amongst the wider trade union movement
• Build the hardship fund with regular standing orders
• Public leafleting to highlight the issues the Trust and Medirest don’t want to recognise

How You Can Help

This struggle is significant for all working in the health service, as we are all under threat of worse terms and conditions to pay for bailing out of the banks. We are asking you to support your colleagues in any way you can. To help fund the struggle finance is important. If you wish to supoort it, please consider setting up the standing order below for a few pounds and month to help sustain the struggle.

Continue reading »]]> The Uniform Tax Rebate Company is advertising to help you get a tax rebate if you wear a uniform for work and have to launder it yourself. They charge you for this service.

There is no need to do this as you can claim the rebate you are owed yourself directly from HMRC for free. http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/EIM32480.htm The UTRC are relying on you being uninformed of this. More info can be found here: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=27967&highlight=uniform+laundry

Members of UNISON, Unite and other major unions will be familiar with adverts for the Tax Rebate Company, with the endorsement of their general secretaries. These con-merchants take 41% of what is rightfully your money. The IWW believes it is nothing short of daylight robbery to promote such a service when once again, you can enquire as to if you are due a rebate directly from HMRC yourself. IWW will never encourage workers to give their money away to parasites like this. Steer well clear! http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/Taxes/BeginnersGuideToTax/IncomeTax/Taxrefundsreclaimingtax/index.htm

Continue reading »]]> January 29^th 2011, 12.00 – 17.00 hours

Venue: the Community Room No 10, Foundling Court, Brunswick Centre, London, WC1N 1QF

(The nearest tubes are Kings X or Russell Square. The nearest entrance in Foundling Court is at the south end of Marchmont St, at the corner opposite Russell Sq tube station.)

If you would like to attend, please register by emailing solidarity@btinternet.com

See map here

Privatisation and cuts – what strategy for health workers?

The government White Paper threatens to reduce the NHS to a logo, as each Trust is turned into an independent Foundation Trust, competing with each other and with private companies for patients. GP Commissioning threatens to hand over control of work to private companies and turning it into time-limited contracts.

Having voted for “coordinated industrial action” at the TUC there is no sign of an organised fightback from the health unions. Now management are trying to blackmail health workers into accepting a freeze in pay and AfC increments or else 35,000 jobs will go. The freeze is combined with the ‘no compulsory redundancy’ offer which is an ‘enabling agreement’ which Trusts can ignore.

In the first session of our meeting Becca Kirkpatrick (speaking in a personal capacity) will discuss how health workers and health campaigners can overcome the resistance of the union leaders to mobilise a mass movement in defence of the NHS and health workers jobs and against the deepening of the “health market”.

American Health unions – lessons for UK health workers

In our second session, Kim Moody (Ex-Director of US Labor Notes) will discuss the experience of the US health unions in the US health system. There is a battle taking place between the business union SEIU, which supports partnership with the private healthcare bosses, and the National Union of Health Workers, a new union built through a revolt of rank and file health workers striving for membership control and election of all reps.

The California Nurses Association which has a tradition of strike action in support of safe nurse/patient staff ratios, has managed to enshrine those ratios into law in California. The CNA has been instrumental in building the new National Nurses United.

Kim will discuss what lessons UK health workers can draw from this experience in order to build combative unions that not only defend their members’ interests but make defence and improvement of the service they provide part of their policy and practice.

Continue reading »]]> Activists from the small militant Polish union Workers’ Initiative (W.I.) recently visited the UK for a mini-speaking tour. The story of their organising achievements against corrupt employers in public healthcare is both impressive and thought-provoking, and far-removed from most of our own daily experiences. It deserves maximum exposure to the labour movement here.

Building the union and the opening salvo

In January 2007 a W.I. member started work at a council-owned secure mental hospital in Bielsko-Biala, southern Poland. In 17 years existence of the hospital there had never been a union there. This meant there was a huge amount of grievances amongst the employees – but it also created the right conditions for W.I. to grow. Workers at the hospital were inexperienced regarding unions and so it was a learning process for all as they went along.

Following some discussions the hospital staff themselves proposed getting organised, approaching the W.I. member with the desire to have a meeting after a few months. The core at the start was just 12 people. Growth was slow – but steady.

In December 2007 the union drew up a list of postulates and handed them to the boss. Their demands included:

• Changes to the regulations of the hospital’s social fund (this fund is a kind of welfare required for Polish workplaces over a certain size, to pay for social activities for the workforce, especially poorer employees. It is commonly managed by the employer in conjunction with the union). The existing regulations were not satisfactory as they made it easy for the bosses to steal/divert/siphon off money from the fund.
• A wage increase of 400 zlotys (£100) per person.

The union asked for copies of all hospital regulations, and found that, illegally, many were not written down. Suspecting fraud by management, they also asked to see the complete financial documentation of the company for the past 3 years. They chose this time period as this is the legal window during which workers can make a claim against their employer in Poland (point of note – the corresponding claim period for Polish bosses to claim against their employees is 5 years…).

Negotiation achieved nothing so the union asked for a delegate from the Ministry of Labour. This can be quite a lottery as some Ministry of Labour delegates are more boss friendly, while others have represented (and favour) unions. W.I. was lucky and the delegate that arrived had experience of working with unions. The delegate has no decision making power and is supposed be a neutral arbitrator. However he said that he supported the W.I. claims, although there was nothing that he could do.

The union investigated the regulations themselves to see if they complied with Polish law. They found several examples of invalid activities – the illegal social fund arrangements, incorrect overtime payments, and more. They passed their findings on to the Bureau of Labour and also some good contacts that they had in the media, and the hospital director resigned over the irregularities.

After this departure, no replacement was found for quite some time. When the new director finally arrived, some new deals were signed. Most of these were timescales for things that already had to be sorted by management anyway, or fines imposed on those who had caused the previous problems. But one of the most important agreements struck was new regulations for the social fund, written entirely by the union, stating that 90% of funds could be instantly passed straight to the workers (previously this proportion was just 30%). The other 10% was kept as a welfare fund, for example to be paid out to a family in the event of a death.

The union had forced the employer to accept that the workers will be partly responsible for deciding how the workplace operates. However, despite the new regulations being in place, the money was not forthcoming, and W.I. took the hospital management to court. Over the previous 3 years the employers had stolen 160,000 zlotys from the social fund (£40,000) and withheld 100,000 zlotys (£25,000) in unpaid wages.

Stepping up action and reaping the spoils

Because the demands from the workers’ original set of postulates had only been partly accomplished, W.I. balloted for strike. By now there were 50 members at the hospital, which was 1/3 of the workforce. The outcome of the vote was 80% in favour, with non-members also supportive. It was also basically a vote against the new director, showing the media that the workers were radical and wouldn’t be appeased by a new director.

W.I. had to carefully choose the form of the strike as they could not leave patients at the closed hospital unattended. This is a dilemma that all health and social care workers who have taken industrial action, or thought about it, will be familiar with. The chosen aspects were:

• Red and black flags hung all around the hospital site
• Employees wore T-shirts saying ‘on strike’
• Press conferences

Admin workers would have been able to walk out but there were not a lot of W.I. members in that section – most members were carers.

The adapted strike was fully victorious, and the workers won an 8% wage increase… twice. On a third occasion they achieved a flat-rate rise of 110 zlotys which was equal to 8% of the minimum salary in the hospital. Going forwards the union will not agree to no further strikes, and are at the moment in talks with the hospital bosses about another 5% wage increase.

The employer is prepared to talk about further pay rises, but they want to give more to the doctors. The union has therefore refused offers like this in order to fight for a fairer deal for lower paid workers.

Multiple tactics and more victories

During the strike the workers looked for alternative means of protest. With the support of other local syndicalist groups, W.I. occupied offices at the Bielsko-Biala city council building (including the head of the council’s office) about 1 month after the strike ballot, at 2pm on a Friday afternoon. They had with them a few journalists and a video camera. They audaciously had even more demands to put on the table, including:

• A guarantee of no layoffs at the hospital
• A guarantee of no reduction in beds at the hospital
• No-one to be made redundant from the hospital until 2015

The activists had got plans of the building, and split up and entered the council house uninvited simultaneously at different entrances. They found food laid on and made themselves comfortable. Their first visitor was a secretary who engaged politely with them – as she tried to get rid of them. She said that the head of the council was away and asked the activists to move to a conference room. They refused, saying that they were not going anywhere until the head of the council was back. Unrolling their sleeping bags showed the council employees that they were serious.

One group spotted the head of council in the building, with a bunch of flowers and a bottle of vodka… they mentioned that they had seen him and 15 minutes later council staff stated that he was ‘just back’ (the place that he had allegedly been at was 80km away…) Eventually the head of the council did speak to the activists, and they filmed the conversation. The activists were shocked to witness the head of the council’s sheer ignorance of the healthcare services that on paper he was responsible for. He was not even able to say the number of hospitals under his jurisdiction.

On film he declared there would be no reduction in beds (contradicting what the new hospital director had said in a radio interview – that a reduction in beds was needed).

Soon after this significant victory two union activists from the Bielsko-Biala mental hospital were summoned for questioning by the local police about their union activities. There was no formal background to the case – this was an attempt by the local authorities, who operated like a clique, to threaten and intimidate them. The arrestees gave up no information during what amounted to an illegal interrogation, and were released with no further consequences following.

A fearsome reputation

Workers’ Initiative have occupied other target sites in support of workers disputes and found it to be an extremely effective way of getting demands met – better than demonstrations alone.

Recently a not-very-militant nurses’ organisation asked W.I. to organise a demonstration outside the city hall in support of workers at another Bielsko-Biala hospital. The nurses came from a local children’s hospital and were in conflict with their employer over pay. The protesters were told once again that the head of the council was ‘away’….so they asked for him to return instantly as he had managed to do before… The demonstration became noisier and magically he did appear. He asked for a delegation to come inside but they refused his request, reminding him they had already been inside, and they preferred to talk outside in the street. The council were scared of being occupied again so they made the nurses an upfront offer of a pay rise, purely because of the demo. The council wanted this to be a secret deal and it was not officially published. But W.I. got hold of the papers and released them to show that fighting hard leads to success.

We’re a happy family?

One of the main planks of theory in Solidarity magazine is anti-partnership, so I am confidently assuming that readers are already onboard with this stance. But the story of what W.I. have achieved in Poland is an incredible illustration of this argument, one that we can both learn from and show to our colleagues when they run up against the disheartening limitations of ‘consultation’.

Clearly the U.K. is not a similar environment to Poland. We have different histories. Here in the 21^st century pitched street battles between workers and police are not commonplace – as they are in Poland, neither are authority figures literally frightened into submission by the force of demonstrations. However the uncompromising attitude of W.I. is universal, and can be translated.

The word ‘partnership’ implies two equal parties, with an equal input into decision making. This does not exist in our workplaces. A frustrating phrase I hear a lot from other reps as a UNISON steward in the NHS Blood & Transplant service (NHSBT) is ‘management have the right to manage’. This is true and means that ultimately, following token consultation, management have the right to do exactly what they like and ignore the union’s wishes.

We all understand that members are most mobilised and proud when the union is active and fighting. This is when recruitment is highest. Joint meetings on the other hand are draining for reps and invisible to the membership. Issues can roll on for months as the employer and the reps fence with each other, making fractional changes to policies. When one branch of UNISON in NHSBT felt they had been screwed by management one time too many, they withdrew from national joint meetings in protest and other reps across the service accused them of denying their members a voice. There is a debate to be had with those reps that fear that by not sitting around the table we are left with no influence. The massive gains of W.I. show that in fact combat is what it takes to get the juiciest fruit. Within the myth of ‘partnership’ the union is always the subordinate. In a free fight, a tug of war, the strongest opponent wins. Without the skewed rules of so-called partnership, the day comes when it is the union in the strongest position, and the employer has to concede total defeat on an issue. This builds further confidence.

On top of this, U.K. trade unionism today is very much tied to the walk-out work stoppage as a sole tactic of industrial action, neglecting the complete range of imaginative activities that are possible, including force projection by service users and supporters of the workers.  Strikes can be unpopular as they create hardship and potentially affect those other than the employer – hard to sustain and with mixed success rates. Workers’ Initiative is an eye-opening case study involving varied effective and unorthodox tactics to talk about with fellow stewards. We need to expand our arsenal of actions, and while some stewards and activists know this, it is not a message that the leadership of UNISON in healthcare will broadcast.

Workers’ Initiative website: http://www.ozzip.pl/english

Continue reading »]]> Unison branch members have won a victory against Calderstones Health Branch in Lancashire. Nurses and support staff working nightshift were in danger of being axed from the medium-secure unit in Whalley. The unit is a specialist centre for people with learning disabilities. As well as job loses staff faced pay cuts and had to work flexible shift patterns from days onto nights, reducing the amount of qualified nurses. This was the first wave of the governments proposed three year programme of cuts.

A Day of Action was organised for June 2010 by union members and staff. Health workers and the public marched through Whalley, with union officials condemning the proposed cost cutting measures. The protest ended with a two hour ‘gate protest’ outside the Milton Road entrance to the hospital.

The Unison branch were prepared to ballot members for strike action. The combination of a protest march, general public support and possible strike action forced the Health branch to back down. Negotiations are under way to find an agreement acceptable to the union.

Continue reading »]]> An IWW member’s report from SWAN’s April meeting. An IWW members report from a SWAN event held in London.  I attended a SWAN (Social Work Action Network) event on the 24^th of April. The event brought together academics and activists in Social Work. There were a number of speakers on personalisation and racism as well as lively contributions from the floor.  I was most interested in the discussion on personalisation. This is the move in social care (and health care) to give individuals entitled to support a budget to spend on organising care to meet their needs. Dr Mark Lymbery outlined the many reasons why social care is moving in this direction. Some of the reasons are to do with service users wanting more control, at the same time the focus on choice is a way to run down collective public services. He also noted that some groups are more able to use this purchasing power than others and that this could lead to greater inequality between those accessing care and support.  One of the strengths of SWAN is it’s links with service user groups, another is that it is focused on action, not just a talking shop. There are two further events that are being publicised by the SWAN London group, details are below.

Wednesday 23rd June, 7pm – 9pm
Council Chamber, Camden Town Hall, London
The next meeting of the SWAN London group will include a presentation by
Keeley Mudd on politically active social work

Fri 3rd – Sat 4th September,
SWAN National Conference, Glasgow
Building a Social Work of Resistance: Cuts, Crisis and Contradictions
SWAN’s annual conference is in Glasgow this year and will explore how we
build networks of resistance to coming cuts to social welfare services, and
also includes a session on fighting racism today

Continue reading »]]> An IWW member’s report from SWAN’s annual general meeting.

I attended the Social Work Action Network Conference in September of last year. SWAN describes itself as “a loose network of social work practitioners, academics, students and social welfare service users united in their concern that social work activity is being undermined by managerialism and marketisation, by the stigmatisation of service users and by welfare cuts and restrictions.”

The national conference included speakers from unions, academic institutions, service user groups and front line practitioners. There was also a speaker from Vestas who got an enthusiastic round of applause. The most interesting part for me was hearing service users stress the importance of links to progressive social work organisations. There was also a recognition that ‘personalisation’ (being given a pot of money to buy own support) was being used to increase marketisation without improving services or increasing funding.

There was a widespread feeling in all the workshops and discussions that the government and top managers were not going to “save” social work, and while there was little critique of the big unions there was a focus on union activists rather than leadership. On the plus side those present obviously do not think that being a member of Unison is enough as at the conference SWAN went from a ‘loose network’ to a membership (£10/£5 conc) organisation with a committee. Local groups and a student group were also formed.

Overall I was encouraged by some fighting spirit in an extremely demoralised profession. See www.socialworkfuture.org for more.