Junior doctors consider pay offer – where next for health workers?
Following 22 months of strike action, the BMA has now presented a pay offer to rank-and-file members.
The capitalist press has portrayed this offer as a 20 percent pay rise – no doubt in preparation to label junior doctors as spoiled if we don’t accept it. But the truth is that this pay offer does little to resolve 16 years of real-terms wage cuts.
Once you factor in worsening inflation since our dispute started, we will now shoulder a 20 percent pay cut.
Initial reactions from junior doctors have been mixed. Some are relieved to finally have an offer that sounds substantial on paper. Others are less impressed. After all, this is a small step in the fight for full pay restoration – one hard-earned through over ten rounds of action and sacrificed income.
Strike action has worked. Our offer has gone up thanks to multiple walkouts. Militancy does pay.
But if we truly want to win this fight, and save our services, we need to connect our struggles with other health and public sector workers.
A 20 percent real pay cut won’t fix the retention crisis in the NHS, for example.
Only coordination action in pursuit of clear socialist policies can provide genuine, sustained gains for health workers and patients.
A junior doctor
G4S security strikes: Reports from the picket lines
Ealing
Morale remains strong amongst G4S security workers, as they enter the fourth week of their 1,500-strong national strike at UK job centres.
Workers have seen a real-terms pay cut, despite being paid as little as the minimum wage in dangerous working conditions. There is also no higher rate for weekend work. One of their main demands is for double pay for Saturday shifts.
RCP comrades in Ealing were warmly received on our second visit to the local picket line.
Workers told us how private corporations have no place operating public services, explaining their demand for in-house contracts.
We can have no trust in Starmer’s government to reverse outsourcing. If you want to fight privatisation, support the strikes!
Joe Broderick
View this post on Instagram
Norwich
G4S security workers in Norwich have been on strike in recent weeks, fighting against low pay and terrible conditions. In the face of a deepening economic crisis, £11.44 per hour simply isn’t enough to live on.
One G4S worker, who wished to remain anonymous, told us:
“Speaking as a security officer working for many years in jobcentres, I believe we deserve a pay rise that reflects the dangerous role we do to protect government staff. None of the security officers want to be on strike for a reasonable pay rise, but we feel this is our only way to be heard.”
Others on the picket line reflected the same mood. It is them, not the bosses, who are sticking their necks out every day – and yet it is the bosses who are paid handsomely, engorging themselves at workers’ expense!
Hit the bosses where it hurts – in their pockets! Solidarity with the security workers!
Lilith Holland
Oxford
Despite a £211 million contract with the government, not a penny of this bounty is trickling down to G4S workers. At the Oxford picket line, comrades spoke at length to one worker, who told us that they were owed a year of back pay.
He himself was working three jobs just to get by. “What kind of life is that?” he asked rhetorically. Another worker revealed that he was on the same salary as a new starter, despite having worked in the industry for over 20 years.
G4S brings in over £15 billion per year in global revenue. All of this is generated by the people who work for them, who face abuse, potential violence, and now increased cost-of-living pressures.
Scandalously, the bosses claim they cannot pay workers more – because the government is fining G4S in response to the strike!
Starmer’s Labour government is no friend of the working class. They will continue to be “red Conservatives”, as one worker put it.
Without the workers, G4S bosses – and other such outsourcing profiteers – would have nothing at all. The same cannot be said for the reverse situation, though. And that’s why we back the security guards’ fight!
Oxford Communists
View this post on Instagram
Coventry Amazon workers see narrow miss in unionisation vote
A recent ballot at Amazon’s Coventry site saw warehouse workers narrowly missing out on achieving union status.
The result was an extremely close call. There was only a one percent difference between the pro- and anti- unionisation votes – equivalent to just 29 workers.
This has led to much disappointment and frustration amongst the rank and file of GMB, which organises workers at the distribution centre.
The bosses have done everything they can to thwart these unionisation efforts. Last summer, management deliberately flooded the site with 1,300 extra workers to dilute the ballot. And they have intimidated and scared workers in an attempt to turn them against the union, threatening to deny employees overtime opportunities.
It will now take another three years before Coventry workers have another chance to hold a ballot for legal union recognition.
Nevertheless, the pot must be kept boiling. As one leading Amazon worker mentioned: “At this point, you can’t be neutral in this situation anymore – you’re either with us or you’re not.”
This refers to the company’s scare tactics: trying to make workers feel that they had more to lose by joining the union, when actually the workers would gain enormously from being united and organised.
Besides cripplingly-low hourly pay, health and safety issues will be at the forefront of this struggle. As training for working in hazardous conditions, for example, all the bosses provide is almost-sham courses and tests, in an effort to cut costs and boost profits.
Coventry warehouse workers may have experienced a setback. But the struggle at Amazon continues.
Jazir Mohammed, Coventry
Valley Vets strike – the vets bite back!
RCP comrades in Wales visited Valley Vets workers on their two-week-long picket line, for the first ever UK vet strike.
Valley Vets comprises four clinics and a hospital. The bosses had previously made an offer of 36p above the minimum wage. As one worker put it: “It was a sham negotiation…we did not drop our caps!”
Indeed, the ensuing strike ballot returned 94% in favour on a 93% turnout. This is hardly surprising: in-work poverty at Valley Vets has pushed eight workers towards food banks; four out of five support staff borrow money to survive.
Valley Vets is the Cardiff-based subsidiary of Vet Partners, which holds 650 sites across Europe. Vet Partners, in turn, is owned by Scooby Equityco Limited, based in the tax haven of Jersey.
Vet Partners turned over £339 million in profit over the last five years. CEO Jo Malone paid herself a salary of £451,000 before bonuses. They have the money!
When Malone visited the picket line in Cardiff during a strike week, one worker shouted: “I’d get paid more working in Aldi!” Her reply was: “Why don’t you then?!” That says it all about the bosses’ priorities!
Workers’ second demand, after an increase of pay, is for Vet Partners to lower their fees. Vet bills have increased 25 percent in the last two years, pushing pet owners to euthanise rather than treat their animals.
Profit is placed above all other considerations. Workers are considered replaceable cogs in a machine. Ultimately, it’s the laws of capitalism which favour the Jo Malones of this world.
But Valley Vets workers know their worth. And they aren’t prepared to settle for crumbs. They will be escalating with two more weeks of strike action. Cardiff RCP will meet them on the picket line and support them 100%!
Nick, Cardiff
View this post on Instagram
Donate to the Valley Vets’ strike fund!
Unite NW/6821 British Veterinary Union
Sort Code: 60 83 01
Account: 20324944
Reference: “Valley”
Butcher boss of the week
Earlier this month, a worker named Kyle Colcomb was killed at the Atlantic Recycling plant in Cardiff. The circumstances of his death are yet unknown. But this is not the first time a death has occurred there.
Only five years ago, in 2019, 50-year-old father-of-two Anthony Bilton was run over and killed by a shovel loader at the very same Atlantic Recycling site where Kyle lost his life. Just this February, Atlantic Recycling Limited (ARL), the firm that runs the site, admitted breaching health and safety standards, and was fined £300,000 for Anthony’s death.
Barely has the ink dried on this tragic chapter before yet another life has now been claimed at the site. “Workers’ safety” is not a term in the bosses’ dictionary.
But the shady details surrounding this horror show don’t end here. ARL is itself a subsidiary firm of the Dauson Environmental Group, owned by David Neal.
This name may ring a bell for readers. Neal recently featured prominently in a political campaigns donation scandal, for donating £200,000 to (now former) Welsh First Minister Vaughan Gething.
This donation came during Gething’s Welsh Labour leadership campaign. But the dodgy hand-greasing goes even further back than this.
Over the last decade, Neal has twice been convicted for environmental offences. This includes illegal dumping of waste in the Gwent Levels, a protected environmental site.
When Gething intervened to help his chum, Neal went on to reward him with £38,000 in donations for his loyal service.
Under capitalism, criminal bosses run free, destroying the planet and killing workers in the name of profit. Meanwhile, their political representatives in the Senedd and Westminster cover for their crimes.
It’s clear that Welsh Labour are no better for workers than the Tories, treating us as expendable pawns for profit.
We can’t rely on the courts or politicians to protect us from criminal bosses like Neal. The two suspended sentences given to Neal – and over £500,000 in fines faced by his companies – has done nothing to prevent yet another worker being killed on his sites.
Only democratic workers’ control over industry can guarantee our safety from these crooks.
Noah and Karl, Cardiff Communists
