Health workers pay healtn wor The only way ALL OUT iMON

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A HEALTH WORKER FROM EDINBURGH REPORTS: LET'S look at the history of the NHS Pay Dispute so far, and at some of what has happened to win the claim. The pay claim was submitted in November 1981, the review date was April 1 1982, and it is now September and we have not achieved the 12%. Selective action has only forced Norman Fowler to 'improve' the offer; all out action can force him to pay up in full. He has been forced to 'revise' the 'final' offer twice, and he can be forced to 'revise' it again.

Action But let's look at the action that has been taken so far. The action in fart started 9 days before tl: settlement date. On Tuesday March 23, 1,000 hospital workers in Manchester went on a half day strike, and held a mass lobby of the Manchester Regional Health Authority. April 1 passed by without so much as a joke from our "leaders' at Congress House, and it wasn't until April 14 that they called for a ... one hour stoppage. That didn't necessarily mean a one hour strike; what the TUC health committee 'recommended' was for union branches to hold 1 hour mass meetings in work time to discuss the pay campaign. One day strikes and selective actions followed, up and down the country, demonstrating the real mood of health workers, and then the trade union lackeys got up off their plump backsides and called a ... one day strike for May 19. The television news that night was dominated by picket ines, demonstrations, marches, rallies and Albert Spanswick's face. The TUCHSO then called 2 more one day strikes for 4 and 8 June, while the government laughed up their sleeves. These days were relatively well supported, and calls for indefinite strike began to be heard.

June 14 marked the first day of COHSE annual conference. By then NUPE conference had voted for indefinite strike with emergency cover only. I remember standing up in the visitors gallery at COHSE conference, listening to Spanswick bellowing Jike a wounded seal, 'We have got the government on the run' • He. obviously hadn't read that morning's newspapers (Tuesday 15 June 1982) which described in lurid detail how 'Britain' had just won the decisive battle in a major overseas imperialist adventure, 8,000 miles away from Bridlington. Spanswick's statement only served to demonstrate his unacceptable ignorance and how much out of touch he was, and is.

June 16 saw the whole South Wales coalfield close for the day in solidarity with us. Fowler, seeing the big guns coming out, hastily 'revised' the offer to 7.5% for nurses and 6% for ancillaries.

What the union leaders failed to emphasise was that the 7.5 and 6% would be partly paid for by job losses and cuts in services, with stricter controls being -eat FROM NUPE BULLETIN IT'S QUITE a shame that Kenneth Clarke has now vanished off the scene he's gone on holiday) as he has a wonderful knack of making our health service members even more determined to step up the action to win the strike.

Wherever he goes, the Minister provokes anger among health workers by his insistence that they are well paid and his dismissal of demonstrators as being politically inspired or else 'idiots larking around' He found it difficult to get a meal anywhere on his : visits 'round the country over the last week as catering staff in hospitais refused to serve him. After demonstraplaced on Health budgets.

Three days of 'intensive nationwide industrial action' were followed by 5 more of the same. Spanswick hastily sent Telex messages to branches, saying the 'intensive' did not mean solid strikes, but was meant to be selective withdrawals and overtime bans. Local stewards in Edinburgh obviously interpreted 'intensive' wrongly, as many of them said, 'What's more intensive than an all-out strike?' One domestic assistant from an Edinburgh Hospital said of Albert Spanswick, 'He's just saying 'Keep the animals quiet, give them something to play with'; that's what he means by intensive.' However, it looks like intensive action may be on the way. The STUC today (24th) called for widespread 24 hour stoppage throughout industry to show support for the health workers', and tions in Derby last Wednesday and Doncaster on Thursday, Clarke 1 provoked a walkout of 700 staff at the Newcastle General Hospital and a mass picket of 800 at the Freeman Hospital.

With no meal provided at the hospital and an attempt to get packed lunches blacked, he tried to go to a local hotel. But GMWU staff at the Europa and Gosforth Park Hotels also felt + at a Minister who "ii not give a living wage to health staff does not deserve a meai himself.

By the time he got to Liverpool on Monday, private catering contractors had been brought in. But he met a walkout of 1000 staff and a demo which he described as his worst reception yet. there is an all-Scotland NHS shop stewards conference planned for September 11. The STUC are reportedly 'stopping only just short of calling a one-day general strike' We have to take up that call, make it a reality, and mobilise all workers, not just to win our 12% pay claim but also to fight against the proposed steel closures in Sheffield and Ravenscraig, against the Tebbit Bill, against pit closures, against three and a quarter million 'officially' unemployed, and use the massive power of working calm THIS WAS the slogan put up on the inside of the door of the TUC headquarters by a smal! group of us who had occupied the hallway. I was with other Class Fighter supporters who had joined the lobby of the TUC Health Services Committee, called by Health Workers for the Full Claim on 26 August. The lobby was to put pressure on the TUC bureaucrats to call an all out indefinite strike preceded by a one day general strike. It was when the Committee police out actio Chairperson, into the haliway.

JOHN HARRIS instead Albert a building paid for by their own building.

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