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Save London�s Ambulance Service!
For united action to defend the NHS
involving trade unions, anti-cuts campaigns and service users.
2 June
London Ambulance
Service recently announced 890 job cuts over five years. This is
staggering, especially when considering the yea-on-year increase in
emergency calls to the service, an increase we can expect to continue
with an ageing population and deteriorating social conditions.
Steve Harbord, Unison
Rep Hayes, B2 Ambulance Station, personal capacity
But just as staggering
is the language used to sell the cuts to ambulance workers and the
general public. The cuts are wrapped in a veil of management-speak
gobbledegook, that sees a savage cuts programme turn into a - COST
IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMME! NHS chief executive Sir David Nicolson states,
''It is critical that the NHS use efficiency savings to make real
improvements to the quality of care for patients''.
Our own Ambulance
service chief Peter Bradley said on BBC news, ''Unfortunately we are
not immune from NHS cuts, but we will look to make savings while
improving the care we give to patients''.
This is language
turned on its head, and an insult to NHS staff and the general public.
Is it too much to ask that our own senior managers put their heads
above the parapet and condemn these cuts for what they are - an
ideological attack on the very principle of the NHS and the welfare
state. Unfortunately at the moment we have only silence and
compliance.
The fact of the matter
is that this is a continuation of the privatisation policies first put
forward by the Tories under Thatcher and continued by New Labour, and
now the baton has been taken up by the Con-Dem coalition. In the
future any private firm, whose first priority is profit and its
shareholders, will be able to apply to run any service within the NHS.
And that goes for the ambulance service too.
You can envisage a
future ambulance service where admin, training, and call-taking are
outsourced, and private ambulance services compete for contracts to
provide emergency cover. This will come at the cost of attacking terms
and conditions for staff and services for the general public.
Fight to defend the
Ambulance Service At the moment there seems to be no strategy to roll
back these cuts from Unison's leadership, and it's becoming
increasingly obvious that things will have to be pushed from below.
To that end we will
call for an emergency branch meeting, and call for a ballot of members
on industrial action to head off the threat of compulsory
redundancies.
There should also be a
recall of the Unison health conference without resolutions being ruled
out of order on how to fight the cuts, and a link up with other
service groups in a special all-London conference. Fight to stop all
cuts Big businesses will be the only ones to gain long term if we
don�t fight the sell-off of the NHS and public services. The argument
that there is no alternative to the cuts and that we are all in this
together is false.
The fact is that this
is a rich country, but that wealth generated by working people is
concentrated in the hands of a few greedy individuals and
corporations, and they will do anything to avoid paying their share
for the greater good of society.
Take tax evasion by
the major multinationals and individuals such as Vodafone, News
International, and Philip Green of BHS. Vodafone simply turned round
to HMS Customs & Excise and told them that instead of paying the �7
billion owed they would pay �1billion, and the government said thanks!
(Try the same when you get your next tax bill!) Rupert Murdoch's News
International uses an elaborate network of offshore tax havens
(remember that the next time the Sun newspaper rants against benefit
cheats) and Philip Green uses his wife.
Pharmaceutical
companies still overcharge the NHS for medicines. Banks, bailed out to
the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds, are still paying obscene
bonuses to the executives on their boards.
But there is an
alternative. Workers must keep up the pressure on the trade union
leaderships by supporting industrial action across all sectors,
starting with the strike action on 30 June. All workers who can should
come on the London demo on that day. We also need to build links with
local community groups and anti-cuts alliances. The National Shop
Stewards Network calls for a 24-hour public sector general strike as a
step towards general strike action by all workers.
The National Shop
Stewards Network was set up to bring together union activists across
all sectors, public and private, to highlight the alternatives, to
fight and organise against the cuts and to give a clear lead to
members in the workplace. The NSSN has already held four conferences
which have gone from strength to strength.
The NSSN is open to
all trade union reps who are not national full time offi cials so if
you are a shop steward, local rep, or health and safety rep, your
place is in the NSSN as well as your union. And all union members are
welcome to attend NSSN meetings.
Stop the cuts!
End all privatisation!
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