Union Officials Betray London Hospital Strike

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Ancilliary staff at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in the City of London voted to return to work on Friday afternoon, following the decision of the Hospital management to reinstate three porters suspended earlier in the week.

The three porters, including NUPE Branch Secretary Maurice Kolander, were suspended at 12.30 on Wednesday morning after refusing to collect patients notes from medical records.

This had never officially been part of their job, and with current cut backs the porters claim they are insufficiently staffed to continue doing this favour for the hospital management.

As soon as the three were sent home, porters stopped work and were soon joined by theatre staff and kitchen staff.

INCENSED

The kitchen staff were incensed by a management decision to implement a new rota from January 17th, which because it cuts established overtime, would mean a reduction in wages of between £6 and £12 a week.

Management initially refused to talk to representatives of the strikers, now supported by sympathy action in other local hospitals.

One picket, Lee Brooks, a COHSE member, told Socialist Press that the management had made the insulting remark that "when the little boys and girls go back to work then we'll talk' Meanwhile the mass media immediately went to town with baseless accusations that patients' lives were being put at risk. Another porter, Ray White, complained bitterly about the coverage the strike had been given, particularly in the Sun.

By Friday afternoon, however, union officials were able to announce to a mass meeting of strikers that the hospital management had agreed to reinstate the Hackney hospital was described as a "slum hospital" by a new report which is to be submitted to the City and East London Area Health Authority.

The report on emergency •and long term treatment at Hackney Hospital mentions inadequate equipment, poor standards of maintenance and old ward buildings.

The report pointed out that many important amenities were either missing, improperly serviced and maintained or of the wrong size and capacity.

It said that there were no proper day rooms where patients who were not bed bound could eat, watch television or generally relax away from the bed area.

Most wards were without proper blinds so that patients became extremely uncomfortable in strong sulight.

Hackney Hospital also had insufficient trolleys, wheelchairs, and cot-sides.

Some ward kitchens still had old and unhygenic wooden draining boards and most wards had inadequate night lighting.

The report added "even where egupment and facilities were avail2o, we received many criticisms of ibe standard of maintenance and deartiness"

Even without these complaints, sozetimes bitter, the evidence was clearly visıble terme tags. broken bulbs, crackta sints ard wort tops. dirty walis 2i saigas - apecially fanlights - for arines haaken and clocks three porters unconditionally and withdraw the new rota "until discussions had taken place with the unions"

Arguing for an immediate return to work, COHSE full time official William McColl agreed that the problem of the cuts had not been solved, but that nothing further could be done until "negotiations" were got under way. Even then, McColl stated:

*I accept that there will be some very disagreeable decisions affecting all staff"

CONTINUE THE John Clarke, NUPE convenor at Queen Elizabeth's Hospital argued strongly for continuation of the strike action on the grounds that the main question - the attack on overtime as a result of the cuts -had not been solved.

Rather than return to the struggle in a week or so, he felt it would be better to continue the fight now.

His contribution was so well received that McColl and the other union officials were forced to make lengthy speeches before the motion for a return to work could be put to the vote. In the event, the motion to return was carried. -Ancilliary workers must be on their guard as the negotiations get under way. The suspension of the three porters looks suspiciously as if it was planned in order to gain a bargaining counter when the opposition to the cuts flowed over into strike action.

NOTHING CONCEDED

The management, despite appearances, have not in fact really conceded anything permanent on the main issue, that there must either be ten redundancies. or a drastic 400-hour reduction in overtime.

And the strenuous efforts made by union officials to pursuade their members to return to work contrast sharply with their lack of leadership in the fight against the attacks on the health service in the area.

In sum, they concluded that Hackney Hospital was a dump -in spite of the hard and competent work of the staff. And this is, of course, before the full weight of Healey's spending cuts makes itself felt in the hospital.

up completely with the report published last week in the Daily Mirror by John Pilger which exposed the situation in Northampton General Hospital.

Pilger exposed such details as a six-week delay for admitting cancer patients, critically ill patients being wheeled along a "dark underground passage" to the main operating theatre, an eye operating theatre into which dust is blown through a hole in the wall, and a lift too small to take dead patients on a trolley - requiring them to be smuggled out in wheelchairs disguised as living patients.

Under these conditions the complete inaction of union officials who refuse to fight the continuing rundown of the NHS, and simply seek "negotiations" on cuts with management is costing • lives and destroying the right to free health care, all in the name of supposedly "saving the Labour government"

*Dr John Reed, chief psychiatric consultant for the Hackney district speaking on Friday, blamed poo!

facilities in the unit at Hackney Hospital for treating mentally ill patients for two recent suicides.

The unit which serves 200,000 people. had fewer than half the beds it needed and half the wards

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cST- BRINB. PDIIMDIC

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