The leadership of the health membership in Unison (the Health service group executive — SGE) will next meet on 19-20 July. Unison activists and branches need to pressurise them to get on with carrying out the policies agreed at Unison health conference back in April. Let us remind them that it is their responsibility to:
1. Mobilise the union to defend the NHS
For once we need to see the huge potential muscle of this union flexed. So far they have failed with even the basics of a campaign. The first steps needed are obvious – publicising the local campaigns and initiatives which Unison branches (and others) are already organising, providing regional support to link up the local campaigns, regional meetings focussed on campaign strategy etc. It’s pitiful that despite a whole raft of local demonstrations organised by branches against NHS cuts since Unison’s conference in mid-June (in Maidstone, Manchester, Leicester and London, at least), the Unison website failed to mention any of them.
2. Name the date for a national day of action
A national day of action would act as a focus for branches to organise local activity, give people confidence to plan something locally in the knowledge it would fit into a wider campaign, link together the local campaigns and be the beginning of a huge national campaign.
3. Name the date for a national demonstration
Unison is in the position to initiate a national demonstration that could pull in other unions and mobilise thousands of workers and health service users. A demonstration on the scale of the anti-poll tax march of 1991, or the more recent anti-war protests is possible, given the massive public support for the NHS. All that’s lacking is somebody to take the initiative. With half a million NHS workers in membership, UNISON should be that body.
4. Enact an industrial action strategy.
This should include immediately balloting members in NHS Logistics who are facing imminent privatisation and have voted overwhelmingly for action in consultative ballots. Other tactics employed by the union to stop the privatisation have not worked, and industrial action is now an urgent necessity.
The pivotal role played by the NHS Logistics Service across the National Health Service means that strong action by these workers could also act as a catalyst for a broader industrial action campaign. The SGE must also be pushed to circulate to all branches the legal advice received on taking lawful industrial action against cuts, so that local activists who want to organise resistance to cuts and closures are not held back by confusion over the legal situation.
The activists meeting on the 29 July in Birmingham will provide an opportunity to follow up the SGE meeting. The meeting will be vital, either for planning to put flesh on the bones of whatever action the SGE manages to call, or, if the SGE fails to call any action, for discussing what action it is possible for rank and file activists to organise despite the SGE reluctance. All healthworkers should make sure their branch is going to be represented at that meeting.
• Organising for action: health worker activists’ meeting. Saturday 29 July, 1pm to 5pm, Carrs Lane Community Centre, Birmingham.
