Holly Johnston, Sheffield Socialist Party and GMB rep in NHS
Hundreds of thousands of nurses, members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), have voted to strike across 176 health trusts. The first national industrial action ballot in the RCN’s 106-year history, the vote is significant both in size and as a reflection of the growing anger among health workers.
The result has given NHS workers in other unions confidence that our own Tory-imposed turnout thresholds can be met, and has encouraged even more members to vote. This week we will see the results of the biggest health union Unison, and the ballots will close for GMB and Unite members too.
When RCN nurses walk out on 15 and 20 December, all other health workers will be right behind them. Striking for us is absolutely about pay, but it’s also about patient safety, privatisation and the future of our NHS.
We have had enough of not being able to give the level of care that we went into our jobs to deliver. Staff are realising that if we don’t strike, things will just keep getting worse.
Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak has appointed private healthcare lobbyist Bill Morgan as a health policy adviser. Morgan’s brief is to drive through NHS ‘efficiencies’, the opposite of the mammoth investment that is needed to save a publicly owned universally free healthcare system. It makes clear that the government’s priority for the NHS is profit rather than patients or staff. Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Madrid at the start of November to defend the public element of their healthcare system, and to defend its staff. We need to see the same sort of mass mobilisation to protect our NHS. The nurses’ strikes, and strikes of other NHS workers, can spearhead the fightback against the destruction of our NHS. We know the support from the public is there!
