THE mass media are determined to draw blood from health workers. On televisIon example, a strike by London hospital led the TV reporter to ask pickets: 'So you don't mind if patients die?' He managed to ask this question no less than three times.
That's part of the faced by health workers cuts. asked BERT ELLICOTT, person of NUPE's North Manchester health services district about the state of cuts in the hospitals and the action that's necessary.
are short especially geriatric ones. Management tell us they can't recruit, so we've produced a bulletin in response to their excuses.
Our basic demands include: *Members of the appropriate trade union to see all applicants and guaranteed accommodation, nursery extend the higher grades get to the lower grades, *Regular information to be tributed to the staff underspending, wages, snoltages. * An overall increase in the number of trained staff.
On the fightback Tameside Trades Council has formed an anti-cuts has Labour councillors leadership. and they have admitted that they intend to make cuts.
Then there's the union leadership. Many people think Alan Fisher and others on the NUPE executive are left wing. They can be left wing in their speeches.
Yet they have reneged on their commitment, voted on at national conference, to campaign to abolish private practice in the NHS. They've simply asked for branches to organise locally if they feel like it. That's just one example.
They keep mouthing fighting cuts, but when it comes to action they don't want to know. The important point is: leadership bring out the membership in defence of victimised workers?
-That's the way to fight the cuts. There are still members who are being sacked, or have been disciplined for taking part in the low pay campaign winter, and they've received minimal or no support.
As faras I'm concerned, the left in the Labour Party today are the right wing of tomorrow. fundamentally change things. Fighting. policies and actions needed. Halt measures are not. the answer.
lik want 'LONDON needs block like it needs another plague' that's one of the slogans adorning what's now an excayation site Covent Garden.
Until a few weeks ago the site was a splendidly laid-out garden, built and maintained by local residents Deoble who work nearby: in an area where the only other place to grow lowers is a window ledge, and wild
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Photo: GEOFFREY SHERIDAN • garden