As RCN members voted, decisively, against the government's latest derisory pay offer, and the government continues its hard nosed position, the RCN leadership have issued a statement saying that strikes could continue until next Christmas. Who is this statement really aimed at – the government or its own members? What is its real purpose?
Remember, the RCN leadership had recommended that its members accept the pathetic offer made by the government. Even today, Greg Hands appeared on TV to ridiculously claim that the government's offer was fair and reasonable, despite the fact that, even in respect of this year, it represents a huge real terms cut in wages, never mind the year after year cuts in real wages that nurses and other state employees have suffered over the last 13 years. The RCN leadership recommended accepting this pathetic offer, despite the fact that, the average pay rise for non-state workers is over 7%, the average increase in pay for workers just changing employers is 14%, and Rolls Royce workers gained a pay rise of nearly 17%, with London bus workers at Abellio securing an 18% pay rise!
What the statement by the RCN leadership means is that they have no strategy to win a decent pay rise for their members any time soon. The government looking at that statement must conclude the same. They will look at it and think, “We've rode the strikes this far and not paid up, and the longer they go on, the more the ground shifts in our favour, as public pressure will mount, and nurses will simply become demoralised, and want to settle, even with a terrible deal.”
And, that is what the statement is really all about. Having recommended acceptance of a terrible deal, and seen the membership reject it overwhelmingly, the union bureaucrats now need to continue a semblance of putting up a fight whilst demoralising the members so that the next time they take the vote, they will get the result they want. Instead of saying that strikes could last until next Christmas, meaning they would not have secured a decent pay rise for this year, but also for next year, the union should have said that they were intensifying the strikes, so as to have greater effect, so as to force the government to come to the table with a decent offer. The union and the BMA are talking about coordinated action, but that is a bit late in the day, especially as UNISON has voted to accept the deal put to them, which weakens the workers position, unless UNISON members are led to provide solidarity action.
And, here lies the key. The action in the NHS ought to be, and should have been, from the start, coordinated action, and preferably undertaken by one big NHS union, covering all NHS workers. What is required now is not a commitment to drag out the dispute indefinitely, but a commitment to step up its intensity until such time as the government is forced to concede. The strategy adopted, by all the unions, of periodic one day strikes, is rather pathetic, and ineffective. Employers weather a day or two day strike, knowing that they can recover lost production, in the days after the strike is over. As has been known for some time, workers working a four day week, are more productive than those working a five day week, for example. To really hit the employers, and be effective, workers need to go back to the all out strike used in the 1950's, 60's, 70's and 80's, and we need to use that as the basis for building solidarity action from other workers, irrespective of current anti-union laws that forbid it.
Health workers are always in a compromised position, because of the nature of their job, which is why, in the past, other workers have taken strike action on their behalf, as with miners strikes in the 1980's, on behalf of health workers. The TUC could do that today, organising an all-out strike on behalf of health workers, on the basis that our lives and livelihoods depend upon them. But, even in the absence of that, there are other alternatives. There should be an all-out strike by all health workers, to force the government to concede, but we then need to protect the lives and health of other workers.
The best way to do that would, ideally, be via a worker-owned and controlled health and social care system, in which workers pay into their own social insurance scheme, at a rate which they decide upon, as sufficient to provide the health and social care, in each area, that adequately meets their needs. It would operate as a cooperative, and commission the actual health and social care, provided by local hospitals, polyclinics, and social care providers, all themselves run as worker cooperatives by the workers within them.
But, we don't yet have that so we have to deal with what we do have. That means that workers should occupy existing hospital and healthcare facilities, in the same way that workers at UCS did in the 1970's, and that French workers did in May 1968. They need to establish workers' committees in each facility, so as to exercise workers control over them, deciding how best they can be run to continue to meet the needs of other workers in their communities. They could do that by also working with local Trades Councils/TUC's, who could provide additional support for their strike, All of these different bodies of workers' democracy and self-government, need to cooperate and coordinate their activities, and the best way of doing that is to establish local workers' councils in each area, a bit like existing trades councils, but sitting permanently as a means of taking action, as well as making decisions.
In fact, on this basis, workers in the finance and accounts departments of NHS Trusts and so on, could ensure that NHS workers not only continued to be paid, but were paid the wage rises they are now claiming. Government workers in the Treasury, could give solidarity action by sending money to those NHS Trusts accordingly, rather than that money being used to buy weapons and fight wars across the globe.
No doubt, the state would try to break up such occupations and solidarity action, which is why the local workers' councils would need to organise defence squads to go to any facility, under threat from the police, so as to defend it, and the occupation. The state, as seen at Orgreave during the Miners' Strike, would then step up its attacks using soldiers in police uniforms and so on, which means that the local workers' committees would need to have prepared local workers' militia, adequately armed and ready to resist such attacks, and each such local workers' council would need to connect with every other such council, in a national network of workers' councils.
That is some way down the line from where we are now, but rather than talking about continuing the same old limp periodic strikes for another year, is the kind of message that the unions and workers should be sending to the government about our determination to win, and indeed more than win, but also to begin to create a new type of society, and new relation between workers and capital, and its ultimate agent, the capitalist state.
As a very first step, local trades councils/TUC's, should set up Health Workers Support Committees, as was done with Miners Support Committees in 1984-5. But, they need to go way beyond those committees, which acted mostly to organise fund raising, demonstrations, and mass pickets. We need such committees, today, to be in permanent session, organising support for health workers, not passively, but actively, by encouraging and coordinating strike action by other workers in support of health workers. If they can't strike completely, then we should do so for them.
From there, we should build the confidence and organisation to begin occupying hospitals and other facilities, and running them under local workers control. If the hospital doesn't pay its electricity bill, in order to pay its workers, then power workers should ensure its electric is not cut off, and the same with its other utility bills, and payments to suppliers. It is, in practice, workers who run all of these different businesses, and their socialised capital is our collective property, and yet we allow the law to continue to allow shareholders and their representatives to control them, and run them for the interests of those shareholders. Its time for that to end, and for workers to take control of their collective property, and use it to meet their needs not those of shareholders and speculators.
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