by Eric Roberts
Pay within the National Health Service has been cut from between 8% and 12% since 2010!
Coincidentally from the same time the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats took it upon themselves (they have no mandate from the British people) to butcher the NHS and sell the carcass on to the highest bidder, who, nine times out of ten, have been wealthy donors to, and, supporters of, you've guessed it, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Parties!
60% of staff within the NHS will not get a pay increase in 2014! The 'lucky' 40% who do, will get 1% (non consolidated) with not so much strings attached, but River Mersey ferry docking ropes attached!
Over a third of all support staff within the NHS are paid below £21,000! And if all this wasn't bad enough, the total cost of all the unnecessary reorganization of the NHS (including Ambulance Services) in England, is £1.5 BILLION!!
That is why UNISON is leading a pay campaign throughout this summer (starting on Thursday 5th June for LAS members outside Waterloo HQ at 12.00) heading towards a TUC organised national demonstration, in London, on 18th October 2014.
Along the way there will also be industrial action ballots in key areas, and without doubt, there will be industrial action.
We are not greedy! We are not selfish! We are not ungrateful! We are not unreasonable!
We are also not idiots! Or mugs! Or powerless!
If members and staff didn't realise before that our Service, and our NHS, is being fed to the wolves, then they do now!
70%, or near as damn it, of the NHS has already been put out to tender. This is not the National Health Service most of us joined.
This is not a National Health Service changing for the betterment of patients or staff.
This is not a National Health Service 'from the cradle to the grave'.
In the thousands of years history and politics that our Country has gone through, the NHS has only been alive for 66 years! It is still young, it is still vulnerable, it is still in danger!
It is hard for us, who have had the NHS around us all our lives, to think that it may not go on to be there throughout our own childrens lives.
Of course, we are an advanced wealthy Country, and there will always be doctors, drugs, treatment, hospitals and life saving breakthroughs, so I don't want to paint some kind of post nuclear armageddon, but........
.........just like a post nuclear armageddon the spoils will go to the few.
We don't want a NHS based on individualism. That path leads to America.
We want a NHS based on collectivism. That path leads to humanity.