[page 4]
Sue Spilling, a community nurse, describes the background to the present struggle and the tasks facing militants The struggle of the nurses and other hospital workers is not just about pay and conditions. It is about the future of the Health Service and about how resources in our society should be allocated: to make profits or to provide services.
The health service originated in the first place because a healthy workforce was necessary as the stresses of modern industry mounted. At a time of full employment, it was crucial that every work was quickly re-habilitated if injured. The demands of the working class helped to ensure the establishment of the NHS Due to medical advances, more and more resources are now allocated to treating those who will never be returned to fulltime production. With increasing unemployment on the agenda. now a proper functioning of the NHS is not as crucial as it was in post-1945: injured workers can be easily replaced from the pool of unemployed workers.
The working class remains unaware of the dangers in this situation. True, there have been sporadic struggles in the past - over health service charges, for instance - and it should be remembered that these were first introduced by a Labour government. More recently, as a result of the Briggs report nurses training will be crammed into two years. On April Ist the Health Service was reorganised - a simple exercise in rationalisation in an attempt to make the most of inadequate resources. The Tory government cut spending in all areas of social expenditure to the tune of Ell million in the case of the NHS. Yet their rich supporters continue to swell the coffers of the varions companies offering private insurance schemes. And the drug companies grow fatter on the sales of millions of pounds worth of drugs - often of dubious value. Private nursing agencies abound. Someone, somewhere, is making plenty out of others" misery!
Rationalisation means, among other things, a quicker turnover of patients. This makes more work for nurses and it places on the family the responsibility for after-care. LAnd we can guess who in the family bears the brunt of this rexponsibility). At all three stages of the wage-freeze, the low-paid in the health service - not only nurses, but abso auxiliary workers have been left with even further deterioration in their pay and conditions.
Many nurses do not understand the need to join trade unions and are confused by the role of the RCN. Becausc in the past there has been no fight over pay and conditions, nurscs have left the service. The tragic situation has developed whereby that which the nurses claim to worry most about - the care of their patients - is being threatened precisely by the professionalism to which they stick.
The unsociable hours force many married women to leave once trained, and to resume nursing on only a part-time basis. Part-time workers as experience has shown time and again arc very difficult to organise. So those now struggling to organise nurses have to contend with an industry largely female, imbued withfalse ideas about professionalism, and with many part-timers.
Increasing numbers of men are now entering the profession, especially in psychiatric nursing. Men are increasingly takin pasts of responsibility in what was one of the few professior where wonen could advance. The fact that few hospitals ha child-care facilities for their staff means that in practice wor do not have equal opportunity.
The strugale of the nurses is complex. They are not the only ones with wage claims in. Other medical staff (radiographers, pbysiotherapists, ete.) have also put in claims. The groups are, on the whole, even less well organised than the The large numbers of immigrant workers in the hospitals are a potential weak spot in the necessary unified struggle.
Under the racist Immigration Act, militancy can result in de Worried about their work permits being withdraw some black hospital workers have signed statements that the will not take part in actions. On the other hand, black nurse to be much more militant - they are not so strongly enamour of the idea of professionalism.
Perhaps the biggest problem is the nature of the work. Th problems facing nurses who are being asked to leave their pat ents in order to take part in actions cannot be avoided. This difficulty high-lights the importance of partial actions - refus to do non-nursing duties, cutting out non-urgent operations, above all, refusing to allow any new private patients. But ns must determine who are urgent cases, otherwise private patie could easily afford to given consultants back -handers to get it as "urgent"
In addition, short strikes will give nurses free time to go to factories, building sites, rail depots, garages, docks, and mar Kets, to get support and action from key sections of the wor ing class - those with cconomic power. This is vital not only because nurses do not wage economic power themselves, bu also because it is not just the livelihood of a section of worke that is at stake. It is the whole future of the health service The nurses have the facts which they must take to the rest of the working class If nurses are not to remain among the lowest paid workers two things are extremely important. First, on the wages fron a sliding-scale must be fought for to ensure that any increase in living costs is matched by an automatic increase in wages Sccond, a whole debate about social expenditure and the prio nites in our society must be opened within the labour move Tent Barbara Castle's enquiry is clearly an attempt to prevent militancy developing and to stop the wave of sympathetic action on the part of other workers. So far, it has not been successful in dampening the struggle of the nurses. Now it is even more important that unionisation efforts are stepped up. that Joint-shop stewards committees are elected in cach hospital, and that each hospital makes links with other hospitals in the locality. Should the enquiry be totally unacceptable, organisation must exist to launch an immediate, intensive response.
[page 5]
We need support, not just sympathy, and we need help' INTERVIEW WITH STUDENT NURSES AT NORTHWICK How many hours do you work? arguments between the unions don't help. At our first