Nupe Hospital Strike

Scan page 10

HIT BY CARS COUNCIL Iwo hundred members of NUPE entered the second week of official strike action at the weekend against management's drive to cut statfing and facilities at the Hammersmith Hospital, West London.

Their action follows a sustained management campaign to press through the cuts in the health service planned by the Area Health Authority for Hammersmith and the Labour government's Department of Health and Social Security.

This has meant pérmanent and deliberate short staffing, management refusal to provide cover for workers sick or on holiday and refusal to allow union representation for members threatened with discipline or 'reassignment' On top of this the management have refused to withdraw their threat to discipline any NUPE member carrying out official union policy.

Bill Geddes, Chairman of' NUPE's North Hammersmith District Branch, angrily refuted management accusations that their action is putting patients at risk.

As he told Socialist Press on the picket line it is the cuts in the Health Service that are to blame. Hammersmith Hospital is a world centre for open heart surgery. But under present plans the number of patients being given heart pacemakers is to be cut from 70 to 50 a year - and they are to be given cheaper, plastic pacemakers!

In effect the government's cuts are condemning twenty people a year to probable death. On top of this nine entire wards in the hospital are out of action for The attempt to find compromise" solution to the dispute at Christopher Relf's of Redditch has failed.

At the local conference, the Company informally offered a pay-off for the secretary of the office committee if he would accept his victimisation, and reinstatement for the member supposedly being made redundant.

The TASS members had made it clear that they would not accept a deal of this kind.

As one member said of the firm's owner and managing director:

"Mrs Smith has always been able various reasons, and NUPE members fear they are planned for permanent clousre.

The strikers at the Hammersmith include porters, cooks, cleaners, laundry and store workers, and those . responsible for sterile supplies.

Theirs is only one of several struggles in London hospitals provoked by the government's policy of financially mutilating the National Health Service in the attempt to solve the economic crisis at the expense of the working class - both health workers and other workers needing health care.

Plans drawn up in secret with the DHSS allow for 120 out of London's 150 hospitals to be closed entirely!

NUPE members on strike at the Hammersmith are in the front line of the struggle to defend the Health Service and the interests of patients.

Trade unionists have responded by refusing to deliver non essential supplies - though urgent medical supplies (blood etc) are allowed through the picket lines.

At the Hammersmith the question of basic trade union rights and the overall fight against the cuts have come together in the sharpest fashion.

The half-hearted official 'support' given by NUrE officials, part of the NUPE leadership's call for local 'guerrilla' strikes against the cuts, are totally inadequate.

Only a policy, backed by national action, to force health spending to be increased in line with prices, and to repair the cuts already made, can defena the jobs and conditions of union members and provide the health care which workers need.

З_AC bought."

The stand taken by the members has brought an enthusiastic response from shop stewards at British Leyland in Oxford and Birmingham.

They have imposed once again a total blacking of Relf's goods in Leyland, which represents 95% of Relf's total work.

This is in spite of a written call from David Buckle, T&GWU District Secretary in Oxford for the blacking to be lifted, An industrial tribunal case on the dispute has now been cancelled after it was correctly argued by the TASS members and Leyland shop stewards that it could only undermine the blacking and at best