NUPE drops pay beds fight

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Last summer the leadership of the National Health Service Unions were in a quandary.

As the Tories' axe slashed on the open wounds left by Labour's axe, and following the sell-out of the winter 'low-pay' battles, they were faced with tne prospect of having to explain their actions (or lack of them) to hostile memberships at the Annual Delegate Conferences.

With the EGA and Clegg resting uncomfortably over their heads, they were in desperate need of some formula to help restore their tarnished credentials and to divert attention away from the more obvious exposures of their position.

Decimated

With the Health Service being decimated, they needed to sound miitant 1 without having to immediately commit themselves to anything so awkward as action-a difficult task! However both Fisher of NUPE and Spanswick of COHSE hit upon the same solution: as cut piled on cut in the NHS, they huffed and puffed about private medicine.

Spanswick, moving an emergency resolution for the COHSE Executive Committee said the union would oppose the reintroduction of pay-beds by any legal means'. With this built-in get-out clause, his waffle about blacking went on to grab the national headlines.

Fisher, however, was caught rather differently. A motion calling for blacking of pay beds from January 1 was carried through NUPE's annual conference despite the opposition of the NEC.

Spanswick and Fisher Six issues........ Three months (12 issues). Six months (25 issues). One year (50 issues) .. EUROPE Six months (25 issues). One year (50 issues) .. REST OF THE WORLD Six months (25 issues). . One year (50 issues) ...

correctly predicted the recommendations of the Royal Commission of Enquiry into the organisation of the NHS which called for the abolition ot private beds within the NHS.

So they thought they were on safe ground, temporarily at least, as the Health Services Board and the Central Health Services Council were committed to a policy of phasing out pay-beds, and it would require legislation to remove those bodies before the Tories could move to increase private facilities.

An added bonus for the bureaucrats was that their blasts of rhetoric on pay beds wouldn't bring them into conflict with a future Labour administration such as action against the cuts might.

Now, however, the GovernSUBSCRIPTION RATES ment Health Services Bill published last month abolishes the HSB and the CHSC, seeks to expand private medicine within the NHS and moves to ease restrictions on the private sector What do we do next? COHSE delegates as an alternative to the NHS.

The time has come for Fishers and Spanswicks to up to their words, or to them.

There was little doubt as to what option they would choose. On December 28 NUPE called off its blacking-due to start three days later. No action at all has been taken by COHSE.

Any moves to black paypatients would undoubtedly bring the unions into conflict with the General Nursing Council, which recently circulated to hospitals the warning that industrial action left nurses open to charges of gross profes£1.80 £3.60 • £7.00 £13.00 • £8.00 £15.00 • £9.00 £17.00 the live eat Senc Park have tended to regard as an im partial body.

But while union leaders capitulate to the Tory plan to boost pay beds, they have done nothing to fight the cuts in the NHS itself.

The Health Services Bill also seeks to make it statutory for Health Authorities-or Districts as is proposed-to keep their expenditure within the limits as directed by the Secretary of State-therefore, any Health Authority following the lead of Lambeth in refusing to implement cuts would be committing a criminal offence, making individual members liable to prosecution.:

This comes at a time when in London alone 2,815 beds are due to be lost by March and ten hospitals due to close completely.

The reply of the COHSE NEC? They have asked their members to fill in a coupon in the union paper to be sent to Health Minister Gerrard Vaughan, protesting against the cuts and to ask branches to appoint monitors to register and collate the effects of the cuts!

The fight must be pressed in every health service union for policy of occupations and strike action to defeat the cuts and mobilise alongside other workers to bring down the Tory government.

Health Minister Vaughan FLAT CAPTAL® GET SOCIALIST clear For a PRESS struggle against lead in the wage control, cuts and redundancies your cheque/P.O. to

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