How should we respond to the offer?
NUPE has asked for everyone to reject it. They've rejected it in toto, Now this is the first time that this particular union, or any union in the public sector that I know, has turned down an offer and said they will go for more.
The only thing is that they are going for the original claim, the E30. threshold, etc. Now the reason we are going for the t40 and the nunorm thresbold, is that up to now our biggest problem has just been Keeping up with inflation. In that 'I don't underestimate the difficulty After the long drawn struggle over the nurses" pay claim the crisis-wracked National Health Service is now faced with a pay claim from the ancillary workers.
In early 1973 ancillary workers fought a long-drawn out struggle against the Tory Government and its Phase 2 policies. Unsupported by the rest of the unions, lacking any leadership from their own unions, these workers were eventually driven back to work.
A number of ancillary workers' union branches are now demanding a higher claim than that drawn up by their leaders. The Portsmouth NUPE branch has called for a E40 basic; 24-hour nurseries; and equal pay for women workers now. They are also demanding that the membership through elected delegates must determine the claim.
RON PEARSON (right above), a leading NUPE shop steward, told Red Weekly how he sees the fight for the claim, and how it is tied up with the fight for an improved health service.
sense the tory threshold has given us more, about E4, than the bignest claim we have won, which is about £2.50.
The only thing is that now we must have it built in to overtime, when you consider that in this hospital 10 hours overtime a person is nothing. The L40 and the nil-norm threshold have to be taken together, because it's a safeguard against the cash increase being cut by inflation.
It's a fact that if we had no threshold over the next year, to negotiate the present claim would be to negotiate a 25% wage cut. The EC is saying that we now have to fight for the original claim. What do you say to that?
ided for £30 plus threshold etc., it was 18 months ago, and certain people thought then that this was the ultimate. Even the left or the militants fought then for £35. and didn't envisage what was on the cards over the next months. But what the left was saying was shown to be true, that with inflation like it is. E30 is nothing now. We've got the best thing.
When the original claim was decThe women in the health service have been doing equal work to men. The male and female nurses do the same job, and though there ate no women porters the domestics are the equivalent. Equal pay has been demanded over the last five years or so.
Ninety per cent of the union in the health service are women. If they get equal pay and equal status they are going to get involved in the union. If we are fighting for ES how can we say to women stand out and support us" if they are saying to themselves "well they'l get E5 but we're only Whut's the importance of winning Well it's quite a simple thing They set up a course for mature students here, for women with kids and tamily commitments, which I estimațe cost them about £180,000. They did it as a source of cheap labour to help overcome the staffing When the women finish that course they lind out they can't do what they were doing on their training. They can't have six weeks holiday with the kids. They can't start at nine in the morning when the kids go to school.
If they are put on a shift they can't take up the jobs at all bec-ause they won't get the flexibility So if we look at understaffing. the first reason for it is under pay. But a second reason is that there are just no facilities for women, and women with kids in particular, to come to work. Even in an old place like this it wouldn't take much to provide a 24 hour nunsery, with beds, the lot. Let's turn the private wing into a creche - that's You mention the private wing. With Barbara Castle making moves ised on private patients, and the consultants threutening retaliation, how do we fit that into the pay claim and defending the NHS?
First on the private patients As far as I'm concerned it's cancerous anyway. But it the consultants in Utis area start to threaten NHS patients with a work to rule, we'vo already told management that we will start blacking private patients yet again. Barbara Castle can say what she lkes, bur she's talking bodies. about only one out of every six private beds coming back into the NHS. We're talking about all six coning back into the NHS. It's been talked about for long enough. So we've got to ban all private patients as quickly as possible.
Can you say how the health workers who lack the economic power of groups like the miners, can win over were united and organised together we could have a lot more muscle even though we don't have a finished product like the Ford workers do.
But the important thing is that we educate our shop stewards so that they don't know only about this br that point in the wage structure, but sec it as part of the whole defence of Whenever a Government is in trouble, the first thing they do is go to the public sector and make cuts. We sit back now and see the cuts taking place, and we say that we're not guing to be scapegoats for the Government and the capitalists. We are going to stand up and fight the cuts. It's by saying this to other workers that we aim to show that the wage claim is part and parcel of defending Underpay causes understaffing and a collapse of the health survice. It also undermines the heulth of the hospital staff themselves. In our hospital sickness among the staff has gone up from 55 to 35% bocause of all the overtime we have to put in With decent wages, these problems can he overcome. And if we get hammered on the wage claims; we will also get hammered in fighting against the cuts in the building programme.
A bad health service is a wage cut for all workers. Imagine paying 30 bob a head for everyone in the family to get medicine, A family of live paying L7.50 a week for healththat's a wage cut.
How should militants be organising now to fight the claim?
There's got to be some kind of rank and file move on the claim. There's got to be action starting on this claim now. And it doesn't matter what union you're in, the rank and file have got to get organWhat do you think about setting up Action Committees in cuch area of the country, to cut across union divisions and orgunise the struggle?
This is a must. If the workers in the NHS don't stand up and fight now for a better NHS, then it'll all be back to private practice, We've got to call for Action Committees so as to make for full rank and file participation. And we've got to go outside the NES to draw in outside How about organising all workers in the public sector?
Yes, it's not just a matter of them supporting us, weve got to support each other. It's all the public sector workers together. We've got to be organised so as to work together. If we don't we're just going to get smushed