Vote Len Hockey


SOCIALIST PARTY member Len Hockey is standing in the election for
the health service group executive (SGE) of UNISON.

Len is a hospital porter working at Whipps Cross Hospital in east
London. He is joint branch secretary of the UNISON branch.

He works for Initial Hospital Services (IHS). And in 2003 he led a
successful campaign which saw the unionisation of privatised, low-paid
mainly migrant workers who were brought in to work for IHS after the
services were privatised.

Alongside his fellow union activists, Len’s campaign was successful,
after strike action during the summer of 2003, in delivering pay and
conditions improvements. It also won an agreement to end the inequality
of treatment of workers doing the same jobs, providing for the same pay
and conditions as those employed directly by the NHS.

Len is standing for election in support of the urgent need for the
development of a united national campaign aimed at the ending of the
privatisation and marketisation of the NHS.

Len says:

"To blame the deficits on pay is an insult. Some top consultants
might have been given more under the Agenda for Change but many of our
low-paid members came off worse under the scheme.

"The government seem intent on driving through their programme
of privatisation and market "reforms". But despite these
attacks, our union still gives millions every year to the Labour Party.

"We should break the link with the Labour Party. Stop spending
our members’ money on the party that attacks us. It is time for UNISON
to link up with other unions and build a new mass workers’ party.

"That is why I support the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party
which has been set up to do exactly that."