Showing posts with label COHSE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label COHSE. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
COHSE Conference 1992
Hector MacKenzie, Mo Mowlan MP, Joan Walley MP (both COHSE sponsored) and some other back bench Labour MP
Friday, October 16, 2015
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
Newham Mayor 1969
Picture Colm O Kane COHSE Regional Secretary and Mr E Chaubert COHSE Regional Chairman
Friday, January 24, 2014
Sunday, September 15, 2013
NHS Pay - London Demonstration 22 September 1982
Wednesday
22 September 1982 was one of the largest acts of solidarity in the
British trade union history, with millions on strike and a national
rally in London with 120,000 taking part. There were demonstrations in
the following towns (not full list)
Aberdeen 12,000
Inverness 1,000
Elgin 500
Lerwick 400
Oban 100
Stornaway 500
Dundee 10,000
Edinburgh 10,000
Kirkcaldy 2,000
Glasgow 20,000
Dumfries 1,000
Newcastle 5,000
York 1,000
Sheffield 10,000
Barnsley 1,000
Leeds 6,000
Hull 4,000
Chesterfield 3,000
Manchester 2,000
St Helens 2,000
Liverpool 20,000
Bolton 2,000
Blackpool 400
Wigan 5,000
Leek 300
Coventry 2,000
Gloucester 500
Hereford 400
Swindon 1,000
Milton Keynes 1,200
Cambridge 2,000
Colchester 1,000
Braintree 100
Norwich 2,000
Kings Lynn 300
Harleston 500
Fakenham 100
Southampton 1,500
Bournemouth 1,000
Eastbourne 500
Yeovil 1,000
Belfast 3,000
Derry 3,000
Armagh 300
Ballymena 200
Enniskillen 350
Swansea 1,000
Aberystwyth 200
Rhondda 500
Friday, June 07, 2013
The Battle to Save - St Leonards Hospital (Hackney)
Demonstration 26th September 1983
St Leonard's, (Hackney) Hospital Occupation 3rd July 1984 - 16th July 1984
In 1979 despite opposition in the form of a day of action and a a march attended by over one thousand people, St Leonard's Hospital (Hackney) A and E Department was closed.
By the early 1980's the future of the whole hospital was looking bleak, by late 1983 the Health Authority was actively looking to close the hospital under pressure from a Conservative Government keen to make cuts. A large rally was organised to oppose closure plans on 26th September 1983 addressed by Rodney Bickerstaffe NUPE General Secretary and Tony Benn MP,
At a Health Authority meeting to ratify the cuts and closures at Hackney Town hall on that day ( 26th September 1983) the Health Authority and its multi millionaire, Jockey Club chairman Louis Freedman were overwhelmed in a turbulent day of protest culminations in them being forced to abandon the meeting after the town hall surrounded by thousands of angry locals opposing the closure plans,
As Millionaire President Louis Freedman refused to use his casting vote to settle the closure issue, demonstrates demanded increasingly vocally that he use his vote (To save the hospital) in his prevaricate to vote the doors to the Council chamber were barred and padlocked after a 20 minute stand off he was escorted out of the building with the help of local Labour MP Brian Sedgemore.
Freeman who lived in a central London penthouse and had private health insurance said in the Daily Mail "We might as well be living in a dictatorship"
The incident was labelled a riot in the Evening Standard and Daily Mirror, and while their was an attempt to keep the Board members in the meeting and to stop them voting in private, not one person was reported as being injured on either side.
The disturbance was carried on all the main news channels that night and newspapers the next day and ensured health moved nationally up the political agenda.
On the 7th June 1984 Norman Fowler, Tory Secretary of State announced his decision to close all wards and remove all beds at St Leonard's and leave just a first aid unit and a handful of community based services.
In response a small working group was established by the staff and Hackney health emergency to look into the possibility of the 180 staff working at St Leonard's organising an occupation or work-in of the hospital
A decision was made to occupy the hospital on the 3rd July 1984
But by the 5th July (NHS Day) the management had somehow managed to secure and issue writs and summons against the key stewards. As NUPE had not made the occupation official, and fearing an injunction (similar to that used against the Miners) NUPE officers removed NUPE placards and began to distance themselves from the occupation..
The legal situation must have been worrying for staff and the union, because it was against the backdrop of anti union legislation which was still confusing and unstable.
So on the 16th July management reposed the hospital, sending in security staff and bailiffs (probably illegally) to end the occupation.
In the next three days management systematically interviewed staff and reps and suspended key stewards.
However, local trade unionists organised a picket line has been maintained 24 hours a day outside the hospital and the drivers from the London Ambulance Station refused to move the patients out
Not satisfied with victimising local union representatives,and intimidating other members of staff involved in in the occupation, the management also seem to have gone out of their way to make life uncomfortable as possible for the patients remaining in the hospital (who refused to move, by threatening legal action).
After the Occupation was smashed and in order to proceed with their closure plans against management employed a whole private army of security guards.
This gang of mercenaries, as one local campaigner described them, cost the Health Authority almost £1,000 a day, money which was desperately needed to restore the crumbling services in the District.
There were also horrific reports of frail, elderly patients being bundled out in the early morning or late at night, driven to other hospitals, torn away from staff they knew and their possessions being sent on much later because they hadn't been told they were to be permanently moved.
So ended another brave attempt to defend the peoples health service in Hackney.
Hospital Closurers
Poplar Hospital closed in 1975
Metropolitan Hospital closed in 1976
Plaistow Maternity hospital closed in 1977 (after an occupation)
Invalid and Crippled Cchildren's hospital closed 1977
Bethnal Green Hospital 1978 (Occupation June 1976-Dec 1978) saved
Key NUPE People involved
Dorothy Hardon NUPE Area Officer
Ian Barber NUPE Area Officer
Jim Bewsher NUPE Area Officer
Harry Barker NUPE London Divisional Officer
Godfry Eastwood NUPE Asst London Divisional Officer
Morris Kollander NUPE Branch Secretary St Barts
Mike Gamble NUPE Secretary Group Six Hospitals
Geoff Craig NUPE Steward
Friday, May 31, 2013
Hector MacKenzie on the new union 1991
Hector Mackenzie COHSE
December 1991
Changes in health care and in COHSE itself have made it a very different union to the one it once was, says general secretary Hector MacKenzie, who sees the creation of a new union with NUPE and NALGO as the next stage in that development.
From a fairly small organisation concentrated in the 'Cinderella' psychiatric and mental handicap hospitals, COHSE has grown to encompass people working throughout the health care sector.
At the same time, it has become more political, more conscious of the need to reflect the concerns of its over-whelmingly female membership and more anxious to ensure that services are targeted at every union member.
With a sound financial base, the ability to speak directly to members and activists and an enviable range of industrial, professional and political services, COHSE has become an organisation capable of taking proactive decisions, anticipating and shaping developments instead of simply reacting.
It is that ability which led COHSE this year to enter talks
with NUPE and NALGO on the creation of a new public services union.
Over the next few years, the arena in which we organise will change out of all recognition. The shift from hospital to community care is already breaking up the large institutions. Divisions between the NHS, social services, the voluntary and the private sectors are blurring.
National pay bargaining is gradually being devolved. And the demands placed on unions by a changing workforce are shifting in emphasis as large numbers of women re-enter the workforce and part-time jobs increase.
All of this demands an imaginative response. We need a new union capable of encompassing all those working in the public services and of responding to their disparate needs, quickly, efficiently and without bureaucratic delay.
We envisage a union in which the basic local building block, the branch, can be tailored to meet the specific needs of a workplace as small as a group home and as large as a district general hospital.
This means abandoning some of our 'hallowed' institutions, such as the compulsory monthly branch meeting,in favour of a less formal organisation which-recognises that diversity of needs and revolves around a workplace 'patch' with union representatives responsible to the branch for their own patch.
We see regions developing a new facilitating role as
both a resource and an administrative centre, but making sure there is no bureaucratic block in the union decision-making structure.
There should be a national tier of perhaps four key
groups, of which health and personal social services
would be one, with their own autonomous policy-making powers and the ability to direct their own finances. There should be professional advisory panels and consultative conferences for groups such as nurses, ambulance personnel and social workers, and new ways of developing policies through working parties and even ballots.
We also want to see a top tier encompassing all mem-
bers and providing central services, holding the membership register and with overall responsibility for the finances and resources of the union.
Having seen other unions grow large and get things wrong, we should learn from their mistakes. We mustavoid an overwhelming bureaucracy in which no decisions can ever be made and initiative is stifled. We must avoid competing power blocks in which regions and trade groups struggle for supremacy to the detriment of the whole union. And we must avoid simply lumping in all the old practices and structures of all three unions.
In short, there cannot and must not simply be a larger version of COHSE, NUPE or NALGO; we need a new union.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Longworth Hospital Occupation 1981
COHSE members had always been at the forefront of the campaign to defend NHS services.
In early December 1980 a brave fight was waged by COHSE nurses and NHS staff to keep open a rural 50 beded care of the elderly hospital called Longworth in Oxfordshire.
Faced with immediate closure of 13 beds on the top floor of the hospital, staff knew it would only be a matter of time before the rest of the hospital would be closed and the patients transferred to Whitney hospital eight miles away
So with held from Oxford Trades Union Council the hospital was occupied by the eighty nursing and support staff.
Assistant COHSE Steward Myra Bungay stated to the Health Service Journal
"We're fighting for the life of the hospital.........Most of the patients have been here a long time and Longworth is now home to them"
The refusal of Ambulancemen to remove patients from the hospital also strengthened the occupation.
Typically the Royal College of Nursing General secretary Catherine Hall condemned the action demanding that the "Management regain control of the hospital for the sake of nurses and patients" local Rcn Regional Officer Bill Reynolds said"The AHA have lost all control of the hospital" he also claimed a Rcn steward at the hospital had been transferred to another hospital "because the AHA cannot guarantee her safety"
However the courageous fight was to be a brief one, In early February (Tuesday 10th ?) 1981, in a surprise raid by management, the vulnerable patients were removed from the hospital by force and moved to the Churchill Hospital.
As was well documented many of the frail elderly patients now seriously disorientated did not survive many weeks after they were ripped from their homes and the staff the knew (later know as the relocation effect
Police sealed off roads around the hospital to prevent supporters defending the hospital.
The Area Health authority claimed it had raided the hospital because COHSE nurses refused to call off the work-in
Ernie Brook COHSE Regional Officer stated " The Area Health Authority gave verbal assurances it would retain the beds for the next three or four years, when I went to receive its written assurance of the agreement, this sticking point was not included"
"Our COHSE members had fought bravely to defend patient care and the hospital'
Longworth Hospital closed soon after the occupation.
Monday, February 27, 2012
1988 COHSE Nurses Special Duty Payments Campaign
LONDON NURSES
FIGHTBACK TO KEEP
SPECIAL DUTY PAYMENTS
LOW PAY - NO WAY
London's low paid and dedicated nurses now face pay cuts of up to £40 per week(£2,000 per year) as a direct result of the Conservative Governments proposals to stop special duty payments and replace them with a fixed hourly rate of £1.20. This will affect all grades and all specialities and will surely lead to more nurses leaving the NHS, worsening the already horrific nursing shortage in London.
PAY JUSTICE FOR LONDON'S NURSES
The Tory Governments proposals will mean the scrapping of special duty payments of 30 per cent extra for night nurses and the extra 60 percent payment for Sunday and holiday work leading to cuts in pay from 35p to £3.06 per hour for London's nurses.
COHSE- London's nursing union says enough is enough COHSE nurses demand pay justice in 1988. London's nurses will not sit and watch our profession undermined due to low pay - join the COHSE resistance.
DEDICATION DOES NOT PAY THE RENT MANAGEMENT'S PROPOSALS
1. Ending of Special Duty Payments and their replacement with a flat rate payment of £1.20 an hour for all night and weekend work.
2. Flat rate payments of 60p an hour for Stand-by Duty at place of work and just 30p an hour for On-call Duty.
3. A change to Excess Hours (overtime) payments.
4. No payment of Special Duty Allowances while attending any courses that lead to promotion or a change of post.
5. A Sleeping-in at work Allowance of 90p an hour.
6. A national agreement covering staff accompanying patients on holiday. This would entitle staff to 12 hours at plain time rates and 12 hours at Sleeping-in Allowance rates for each 24 hour period.
LONDON COHSE NURSES DEMAND
NO CUTS IN SPECIAL DUTY PAYMENTS
£1,000 INCREASE IN LONDON WEIGHTING
20%INCREASE IN NATIONAL NURSES PAY
NO POLL TAX FOR STUDENT NURSES
NO CUTS IN LONDON'S HEALTH SERVICE
PAY JUSTICE
NOTE
As a result of the campaign waged by COHSE and NUPE nurses Special duty Payments were saved.
Action by nurses and donor carers in the Blood Service, followed by industrial action in North Manchester put an end to the Conservatives plans to cut Special duty payments.
A campaign waged by COHSE (as part of the general 1988 nurses industrial Acton) to secure an increase in London weighting was also successful in 1988 securing the biggest increase every won.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
A Brief History of South Africian Nursing Trade Unionism
A Brief History of South African Nursing
By Moipone Tlapu NEHAWU Trade Union (July 2000)
SOUTH AFRICAN NURSES
The theme of the National League for Nursing National Conference on Nursing Education: "Community Building and Activism, "is a timely topic in this chaotic and changing world.
Even in South Africa, where confusion and violence often prevail, where there are many voices within liberation struggle. Nursing is part of this activism. The many voices create debate, and it is through this debate that South African people will be able to clarify their ideas.
STRUGGLE OF BLACK NURSES
The black nurses struggle in SA was subtle as most of the nurses are apathetic because they see themselves as being part of an elite profession isolated from community struggle. Nurses were unable to bring change in the communities in either health sector or society at large despite their numerical numbers / advantage some of the apathy, argument goes lies in the militaristic origins of Nursing as exemplified by the career of Florence Nighgtigale (Noixeba Lubanga) 1999.
The South African Nursing Organisation /Association where officials were predominately white, saw themselves as an exclusive group whose interest were identical with those of the ruling class and the government in power blacks had no power and influence on those who made the laws,and had no voting right. Nursing leaders in S.A. have actively discouraged Nurses from becoming politically involved and challenging the apartheid health care system. They have repeatedly involved notions of professional neutrality to justify this attitude. According to these leaders, the nurses professional image must be maintained at all cost despite any Social, economic and political changes.
Nurses should remain in the Nursing only Organisation so as don't mix with more progressive leaders from other professional world.
In 1920's African Women worked initially as domestics in South' Africans growing cities because they encountered the least resistance from men and women of other racial groups in this kind of work, and every white family aspires to have a servant, there was an ever growing demand. In Johannesburg and other centers, the churches set up native girl's industrial schools, in which girls were taught the rudiments of housekeeping. By the 1920's female African domestic servants were becoming the most in Rand and other Urban Centres.
BANTU NURSES ASSOCIATION
Black Nurses did not belong to the white^only S.A. trained Nurses Association (SATNA) which was founded in 1913. Realizing they could not belong to the SATNA, the African Nurses led by a graduate Nurse form Victoria hospital at Lovedale, decided as early as the 1920's to form their own Organisation, the Bantu Nurses Association (BNA). In 1930, hospitals in around Johannesburg were training African Nurses, and the white Matron directors of Nursing) held meeting to discuss the feasibility of forming an association like BNA. Lowles (1933) P23 recalls how they decided it would be better to "lay emphasis upon the formation of wayfarer detachments (i.e Girl Scouts) than institute an association for black nurses instead the matrons emphasized the Witwatersrand branch of SANTA should elect a white Nurse to represent Bantu Nurses.
In 1932 after the black nurses struggle to convince "White Matron" to continue with Bantu Nurses Association there were finally allowed to affiliate with SATNA. In the early 1940's S.A. faced a severe Nursing crisis. Contributing factors were poor living conditions, low salaries, shortage of nurses, restriction on married nurses, and nurses leaving the profession. As a direct result of dissatisfaction with SATNA, BNA started a movement in 1942 to form a new organisation along trade union lines.
This organization convened a meeting in Red cross hall Johannesburg on the 30th August, 1942, with a view to organizing the Nursing Profession as a trade Union the main speaker was a representative form Garment workers Union, (GAWU) he stressed the fact that nurses were exploited by their employers, and many of the long suffering nurses immediately reacted favorably to this sympathetic technique (Nonceba Lubango 1991)
SATNA leadership together with the government joined forces to undertake a tour to address nurses on the subject of Trade unions. During this visits speakers warned Nurses that the political aura associated with unions was contrary to the spirit of Nursing (Searie 1965) (10 - incidentally this is still the believe today in the year 2000) what worried the government and SATNA leadership was the thought that Nurses might adopt a "trade union mentality" and might be persuaded to strike to improve their situation.
Following this the government gave 1943 Nursing Bill priority (Marks 1988). Origin 1988). The South African Act nO. 45 of 1944 followed. The South African Nursing Association (SANA) replaced SATNA. SANA was announced to be a compulsory body for all nurses with creation of SANA, BNA was effectively eliminated. Even at that time there were those who contested the achievements of the ACT "origins (1988) noted that Charlotte Searie, then the Director of Nursing in Transvaal and already a dominant figure in SANA and founder of SANC was explicit on the reasons.
She argued that non European Nurses, Bantu/Blacks" were only included on equal basis in the 1944 Act at the time there were very few of them and because the Nurses were assured by the Provincial authorities responsible for hospital services that the authorities did not intend training black nurses for full certificates.
NURSING STRIKES
SANA developed a highly bureaucratic structure that stifled progress within the organisation. Nurses continued to express their discontent in the form of strike despite SANA constraints.
Blacks Nurses working at the Alexandra clinic in Alexandra Township just outside Johannesburg went on strike in 1947. The Alexandra strike was prelude to others that followed.
In 1949, student Nurses at Victoria hospital Lovedale went on strike to protest the unfair dismissal of a nurse who had presented a petition of grievances to the hospital administration.
The kind of intimidation to which union minded Nurses were subjected was demonstrated in 1961 Nurses, strike at king George Tuberculosis hospital in Durban, the strike was called to protest an incident in which matrons of the Nurses, residence severely caned 12 students Nurses allegedly for arriving in class few minutes late. Skilled and unskilled hospital workers supported the nurse's demand for expulsion of matron.
With assistance from the local hospital workers union, the nurses made several demands.
They wanted the policy of unequal eating facilities abolished. The African Nurses were given lower quality meals, were required to bring their own eating utensils, and paid more than whites for then- boarding and lodging. They also demanded raises in their scandalously low salaries. They demanded extension of maternity leave to unmarried pregnant women in order to prevent fatal illegal abortions. They wanted UIF, they demanded and end to the degrading practice that required African employee to make a cross when collecting their paychecks, instead of signing for them. Finally they demanded that African (Black) Nurses to receive the same prophylactic treatment against TB that was given to all other employee (Luckaardt and wall, 1980).
The Nurses received support from local and international communities. Some of their demands were met, but the hospital superintendent refuse to fire the matron. 22 nurses were fired, and nurses were threatened with dismissal if they belong to a union. Nursing authorities argued that trade unions could not act on behalf of nurses as that was the duty of SANA. Yet it took a trade union to help nurses to improve condition of service.
INTERNATIONAL STRUGGLE
Internationally the struggle continued in 1946 the American Nurses Association established an economic security program for bargaining purposes. In England Royal College of Nursing is the professional association that won certification as independent trade union in 1977. British Nurses were also represented by trade unions that are affiliated with the trade union congress. According to Unison the struggle is been taken over by Unions such as Unison.
In Australia, Royal Australian Nursing Federal is affiliated with the Australian council of trade union.
,
In South Africa the 1978 Nursing amended ACT (no 50) made strike action by nurses a statutory offense with fines of up to R500, 00 one year jail or both (warning 1983).
SEPARATE REGISTERS
The coming to power of National party in 1948 had a number of effects. On nursing black nurses had always been discriminated against for despite equal training, their salaries were far lower than those of whites and their training facilities were inferior. To foster apartheid 1957 Nursing Act of 1957 was passed separate registers were created for different ethnic groups namely Africans, Colored/Asians and whites black nurses were barred from holding office on central board of SANA (19 sutten, 1986). The pass system required blacks to carry at all times a "pass book" containing the person's identify and employment record. Failure to produce the "passbook" when requested by a police officer was a criminal offense.
Between 1955 and 1956 many Nurses joined the Women's league of ANC and the Federation of South African Women to fight "Pass Law" Protest meetings took place at many hospitals. At the meeting of non-white Nurses held in January 1955 at King Edward VIII hospital in Durban, tempers rose to such an extent that the police. Were called but women had quitted down the time the police arrived. The hospital superintendent than announced that the Nursing Council had informed him that all black Nurses who were not in possession of their identity numbers need not finance them' (South African Institute of Race Relation Survey, 1958-1959).
Now white nurses at Johannesburg's Baragwanath hospital also held protest meetings and announced that they would refuse to complete the forms the Federation of South African Women decide to support the Nurses and arrange a demonstration in support of Nurses.
The African townships were co-ordinated off from the hospital, roadblocks were setup. ANC Women's League and 500 Nurses organised a big demonstration at organises a big demonstration at Baragwanath hospital, where they met with hospital Matrons and explained the reasons for resisting the proposed legislation. The Matron wrote back to Nursing Council and the proposal was withdrawn for time being.
In 1978 Act provided for non-racial Nursing Council represent South African Citizens, this provision effectively excluded many registered African Nurses who, interms of S.A. Law were citizens of independent homelands. African Nurses actively opposed forced recognition into separate white Nurse's domination of SANA.
When these homeland nursing association were formed, the African Nurses who worked in the homelands or the so-called independent states received no financial assistance from SANA even though had been paying annual dues to this body for decades. Most Nurses paid the homeland association and the SANA for incase they need to work in S.A at some point.
In the 1980's the were many changes in spite of the legislation many nurses follow the waves of trade union activism. They joined union such as Black Health and Allied Workers union, the National Education and Allied Workers Union and Baragwanath workers union..
The question that remained unanswered is that do nurses need to be unionised, and to be poliicised Nurses, and especially Nurses leaders who regard political participation as alien to Nurses, and who regard politics and power to be incompatible to Nursing, sector and maintain a powerless nursing professional corps.
The government of National Unity has announced free health care for all mothers and children up to five years without consultation with those responsible for providing this health care-that, is Nurses and without adequate prior notification of health services nor the Nurses insisted on improved staffing of health facilities increased budgets and increased supplies of medicines. This "free health Services" whatever its merits in theory, might disempower and disillusions Nurses who are now called upon to render services to many more people, without the necessary staff, facilities, equipment, or drugs.
The only way, in which Nurses could prove their need for more staff, more equipment and more medicines would be to compile and present statistics of their workloads before and after this announcement was made. Unless Nurses can succeed in satisfactorily proving their increased workload, health-care planners will continue to assume that the services cope with the available facilities and equipment Nurses also need to communicate these statistics to positions and other decision makers.
Since politicians determine health care policies allocate health care budgets and decide where and when health care facilities will be expanded, they influence the health care system both directly and indirectly.
IN CONCLUSION
It is very important to develop new curriculum of training Nurses, the paradigm shift should focus, on content base education, in addition the Curriculum should cover politics and, also develop all-rounder Cadre, who might be able to fit in all spheres in life, to be orientated in all comers of life.
The broad aim of operation 4000 was to recruit professionals amongst those professionals to be organised Nurses cover a very big number NEHAWU has a serious challenges to develop Nurses and recruit more into the organisation.
NOTES
CAPE TOWN June 18 1997 - SAPA
APARTHEID NURSES APOLOGISE FOR UNDERMINING HUMAN RIGHTS
In a submission to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing in Cape Town, the SANC also proposed that appropriate reparation be made to victims of council violations. It did not elaborate.
Disgracefully, the British Royal College of Nursing (RCN) continued to foster close links with the 'Whites only" nursing union until the end of Apartheid. COHSE. NUPE and NALGO had impeccable records in opposing Apartheid South Africa
200 Nurses sacked in South Africa 1961
200 African Nurses Told To Leave Union or Be Sacked
September 1961 COHSE: the health care union Journal report
THE South African Congress of Trade Unions reports that 200 nurses at King George V Hospital, Durban, have been given an ultimatum to resign from the Hospital Workers Union, a non-white body, or be dismissed.
Previously 20 nurses were sacked following a strike and meal boycott by African, Indian and coloured nurses at the hospital, in protest against the caning of nurses and very low wages (an African nurse receives about £12 a month, plus board and lodging; a labourer receives as little as £5 a month).
In the middle of July the Hospital Workers' Union, an affiliate of S.A.C.T.U., submitted a memorandum to the hospital authorities asking for increased wages and improved conditions of work. The demands ranged from £1 to £1 10s. a day increased wages; maternity allowance; unemployment pay; workmen's compensation; infectious disease allowance; 3 weeks' annual leave; improved food; shorter hours of work; recognition of the Union. (The demands varied according to the different categories of employees, staff nurses, maids, nurses, clerical workers, cooks, labourers, and so on.)
African nurses and labourers at the hospital decided to boycott food supplied to them on August 5, after the caning of 11 African nurses by a white sister-tutor because they were "not too bright at classes". The hospital was brought to a standstill when the African nurses marched to the superintendent demanding the expulsion of the sister-tutor and calling on him to investigate their grievances.
They were joined by Coloured and Indian nurses and all the non-white staff : labourers, clerical workers, cooks etc. The demonstration lasted about 8 hours, during which time hundreds of police were called out. the chief of police addressed the workers but was unable to persuade them to return to work.
The superintendent at last arrived, and after a great deal of argument agreed to investigate their grievances. He stated that he was not prepared to negotiate with the Union. The workers then returned to work, but the nurses living in the hospital started a boycott of their food and decided to continue this until their demands are met, food being supplied by sympathisers.
A second demonstration took place 10 days later when some 300 non-white nurses marched to the superintendent's office to demand the transfer of the sister-tutor from the nurses' home. Before this march took place, uniformed police patrolled all wards at the hospital and an armed contingent of police in a riot van was outside the hospital. The superintendent refused to see the nurses, and all the demands of the workers have been rejected on the grounds that they are "politically inspired".
The nurses are continuing the struggle. They ask for protests to be sent to the hospital authorities and for support for their demands, and also for donations. The address of the Hospital Workers' Union is 311 Lakhani Chambers, 2 Saville Street, Durban, South AfricaA. The Union will pass on all protests received.
It Should be noted that during this period the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) maintained links with the Whites only nursing union in South Africa
------------------------------------------------
CANED AFRICAN NURSES PROTEST
Sir—The following is a copy of a letter I sent to the Superintendent of King George V Hospital, Durban, South Africa, on November 16, 1961, after reading an account of events at the hospital in your Journal:
Sir—The P.S.I, is an international federation of trade unions and professional associations of civil servants and public employees, including nurses and other hospital workers. Its affiliated organisations number 75 and 37 countries throughout the Western world. The total membership is 2.4 million.
In the Journal of the British Confederation of Health Service Employees (issue of September/October 1961) I read an amazing and shocking story of the caning of nurses followed by a naturally justified rebellion by well nigh the whole staff of your hospital and by the irruption of the police into the hospital. This appears to be about the ugliest incident that, together with many others, illustrates the thoroughly bad relations between an employing authority and its workers. The relationship appears to be characterised by intimidation against organising in trade unions and the refusal to grant fair conditions of employment.
Words are inadequate to express the indignation that such action arouses in all people who value human rights and human dignity. I know that Apartheid interferes with the normal functioning of civilised life and I can visualise that in some instances employers lack the independence or the courage to resist a damnable policy imposed on them from above.
However, the administrator of a hospital is in a position- that enables him to wield authority and power in accordance with the dictates of conscience, even in opposition to higher authorities whom racial prejudice has made unreasonable.
The incidents of August 5 and 16 last provided copy for an unseemly page in the professional journals of nurses and hospital workers. It is in your power. Sir, to redress a bad situation and to enable the editors of those journals to report on something good and hopeful coming out of South Africa by virtue of your own action. I appeal to you to use your power to that effect.
P. TOFAHRN,
PIC
(Picture Nurses protest apartheid and the segregation of their profession, South Africa, 1958)
COHSE banner on Anti Apartheid demonstartion early 1980's
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Colin Robinson COHSE Presidential Address 1989
COHSE Conference 1989
20-23 June 1989 Royal Hall, The Spa, Bridlington
26th Delegate conference
Colin Robinson President
DELEGATES AND FRIENDS,
It is my pleasure to welcome you to Bridlington, to our 26th Annual Delegate Conference. Colleagues, in many respects this has been a good year for COHSE. We have had 18 months now of solid campaigning for what we believe in, defending the NHS and fighting for improved pay and conditions for our members.
We have seen a successful start to direct mailing, as Conference was promised last year. And, perhaps most importantly of all, we have seen our membership rise by more than 10,000.
But colleagues, in a number of other ways the pressures upon us have intensified. We have the rampant Right-wing bullying approach of the Government, intent on privatising the service as its ultimate end. And we have to be aware that the shape of trade unionism is changing.
Mergers and amalgamations will mean that a few big unions will dominate the scene within a few years and we must consider our response to that. We must ensure that no matter what happens the interests of working people are protected.
Since we met last year in Blackpool we have been involved in an epic struggle with the Government on behalf of our members facing the biggest shake up in nurse grading since the start of the National Health Service.
By cash limiting the clinical grading exercise the Secretary of State for Health has sold thousands of nurses short, depriving them of their appropriate grades and recognition of their professional experience and expertise.
By adopting a strategy of working to grade, COHSE nurses demonstrated conclusively to colleagues and managers that their case was just. But the unilateral directives from the Department of Health have left many nurses high and dry with no chance of winning higher grades through the appeals system.
Ministers promised to fund the grading review in full. They broke this pledge and transformed it into a cost cutting regrading exercise. So, rather than create a proper career structure for nurses at the bedside, the Government has insulted them.
The magnificent fight put up by nurses meant we won the media battle hands down. The arrogance of health secretary, Kenneth Clarke, demonstrated by his refusal to meet the committee elected to represent the profession and his refusal to put the grading dispute to independent arbitration, has alienated all who care about the future of the health service. In much the same way as he has slandered doctors, Mr Clarke set about attacking COHSE and NUPE, trying in vain to label us as mindless militants rather than dedicated health care staff.
The boost COHSE received in nurse membership clearly indicates who nurses believed. Our nurse members turned to us in their thousands for help, advice and support. Our stewards, branch secretaries, regional and national officials rose admirably to the task. They gave them that support and continue to do so under very difficult circumstances. And as a result, thousands more nurses have joined us, impressed by what COHSE can offer.
Colleagues, we have placed our trust in the independence of the Pay Review Body. But in future the Pay Review Body will have to be wary of the trickery, treachery and deceit of the Government, which would like nothing more than to undermine it and get rid of it all together.
Our rise in membership and our moves towards reorganisation and direct mailing have left COHSE in good shape to face the 1990s. But we have to recognise thatthe world is changing about us. By the 21st century, the trade union sphere could be dominated by just six super unions. In that environment COHSE would have to look closely at all possible options for its future.
More urgently, the fundamental changes proposed for the National Health Service dictate a strong, unified response and may necessitate such close co-operation that full amalgamation might be the logical solution.
We should not set our face against such changes. But we should not also assume that amalgamation is our only way forward. We are the only union that organises exclusively across all health and social services staff. As such we have a coherence, strength and experience which no other union can match. We will not throw that away lightly. But nor will we adopt a head in the sand approach.
That is what the 'twin track' policy put forward by the NEC means. We owe it to our members and to the wider trade union movement to explore all the feasible options. It will always be the members who decide where we as an organisation are going. We must not allow that choice to
be hampered or restricted by past decisions or prejudices.
We proved over the last year that we are a campaigning union. This year, our Conference agenda rightly makes it clear that's the way we must continue. But as an organisation of 220,000 members we must concentrate resources and decide on priorities. Branch motions call on the union to organise over ten different campaigns.
We could support all of these but it would be dishonest. Our resources as a union would be spread so thinly that our campaigning activity would make no impact. To be effective any campaign must go beyond ritual condem-
nations and involve sound organisational work that will mobilise the maximum number of members.
I believe that this Government's strategy for the complete and irrevocable privatisation of the NHS is right on schedule.
It began in 1979 and, with every rise in prescription charges, it has increased in pace and ferocity. As the prospects of electoral defeat now loom large on the horizon, Thatcher's Right-wing think tanks have never worked harder to produce the elements necessary for a successful NHS sell off.
Mrs Thatcher's new model Health Service will mean propaganda, mininformation, insecurity, poverty and fear in varying degrees for the consumer. It will mean bribery, manipulation, disillusionment, harassment and eventual demoralisation for health workers.
But for the market leaders it will be profit, greed, patronage and ambition.
These are the camouflaged ingredients which I believe will form the foundations for this Government's more efficient, more caring National Health Service.
As a union that helped create the National Health Service, we can have no greater priority than the defeat of the Government' s White Paper proposals. We cannot rely on the doctors to do our work for us.
As nurses, as hospital support workers, as ambulance and community staff, we have daily contact with patients and users. We must warn them of the evils of a market health system geared more to cutting costs and standards than providing for the need of users.
If we go down the road proposed by the White Paper, we will soon end up with a nightmarish American style health care system. With private hospitals competing alongside NHS and opted out hospitals for patients and with tax relief for private health insurance, private medicine will be given a new-found status.
Budget conscious GPs will be forced unceremoniously to dump their elderly and chronically sick patients to fend for themselves. Market medicine does not cater for those most in need of health care.
In the USA nearly 40 million people have to survive without health cover. In the United States private medicine has achieved a unique, unenviable double. It has created the costliest and least efficient system in the world.
Over-treatment of insured patients is rife because doctors are paid on a piece-work basis. As a result an American woman is three times more likely than a Briton to have both a hysterectomy and a baby born by Caesarian section.
While the rich suffer from treatment they don't need, the poor and the sick suffer because they can't get treated. As a result, black children die in the shadow of enormous state of the art hospitals.
Our role in defeating the White Paper must be to challenge Government propaganda and to work hand in glove with consumer and community groups, women's organisations, trade unions and professional associations to create an impenetrable wall of opposition to the proposals.
After ten years at Downing Street, Mrs Thatcher believes herself capable of overwhelming all opposition and setting a new agenda for the nation.
Traditionally the Tories have attacked the NHS by starving it of resources and paying staff poverty wages. They have avoided a full assault on the NHS as a national institution. It is a measure of Mrs Thatcher's belief in her own indestructibility that she is now willing to make that assault.
But I believe that Mrs Thatcher has seriously miscalculated. Despite its problems, the National Health Service remains both an island of equality in a sea of inequality and universally popular. The NHS has always figured near the top in opinion polls among issues of importance in the electorate. The Vale of Glamorgan by-election indicated how fragile Tory dominance at elections can be. Our role as the major health union must be to transform that fragility into a slide that will sweep the Tories from power at the next election.
Colin Robinson
COHSE President
(Maidstone)
COHSE President Conference Address 1991
June 11- June 14th 1991
Empress Ballroom, Blackpool
President Colin Robinson
Conference, I am pleased to welcome you all to Blackpool at a time when the health service has once again hit the top of the political agenda.
The "softly, softly' approach to the Government's health reforms heralded in by William Waldegrave's succession to Kenneth Clarke as Health Secretary lasted just 25 days. That is how long it took the Government's flagship trust hospital. Guys, to shatter the carefully created illusion of a reformed health service delivering choice, quality care and efficiency to NHS patients.
Then we saw Health Secretary, William Waldegrave wash his hands of the trust cuts.
But the people ofMonmouth did not allow him to get away with it. They passed a damning verdict on the Government's attempt to create a two tier service.
Nearly 9,000 beds were closed, temporarily or permanently, last winter to wipe away old debts. Yet within days of the new market health system, further cuts were being made. The Government claims that these problems have arisen because of poor management and overstaffing. But the real reason is the persistent underfunding of the NHS.
Just a few months ago, the Government was willing to give hospitals a blank cheque to treat Gulf war casualties. It is not the resources but the political will, the commitment to public services, which this Government lacks.
Thankfully, our hospitals were not inudated with the sick and injured from the Gulf. So why is the moneyavailable during that crisis not being used to rescue hospitals from their present funding crisis?
Nearly one million people are waiting for operations, many for over a year. Mounting aiting lists have been met not by urgently needed new cash but by cosmetic attempts to manipulate the figures.
Now it has introduced a health service where the market rules. One which is untried anduntested — a leap in the dark. The Government promised greater choice for patients, greater value for money and a list of essential 'core services' which the trusts would have to provide. The reality is quite different.
Patients and non budget holding GPs have to use the hospitals where their health authority have signed contracts. Money or the referral of patients outside these contracts is extremely limited. Even for budget holding GPs, choice of hospital is illusory. The price of care and not the principle of care is clearly the overriding policy of this Government however they attempt to dress it up.
The Health Secretary has claimed that his new system would provide better protection to Cinderella services. But the Guy's experience refutes this. Trusts battling it out for survival will opt for the fashionable hi-tech specialties and ignore the less glamorous services so vital for the local communities they serve. This has been aided and abetted by the Government which
far from protecting 'core services' has allowed them to be diluted into designated services on which business led health authorities can decide
Another symptom of the crisis in the NHS is the widening health gap between people in different social classes. The biggest threat to health in the UK is poverty. Since the Black Committee set out its damning statistics ten years ago, no decade century has seen such a widening of
inequalities. Yet this issue is of such vital concern to the Government that they are still shuffling about with a green paper when the World Health Organisation's charter "Health for All" required them to have drawn up a comprehensive strategy by last year.
The green paper sets out several targets for health managers to aim at: reductions in deaths from strokes, cancers and coronary heart disease, increases in immunisation and breast feeding. But how this is to be achieved and what ministers will do is leftunsaid. Worse still, poverty, homelessness and cuts to the social security programmes are not even discussed. So much for the Prime Minister's commitment to a classless, open society with opportunity for all.
We live in an increasingly divided nation. We live too in an increasingly divided world. It is scandalous that we lavish millions on weapons of destruction and pride ourselves on unleashing a precision military machine against Iraq. Yet we cannot effectively organise emergency aid
to Bangladesh cyclone victims or to the millions starving in Africa. Why is it that the Kurds have to rely on fund-raising concerts for aid while the military Just turns to the exchequer? The end of the Cold War is making the peace dividend a reality.
But can we trust this Government to invest that windfall in overseas aid and in public services rather than fritter it away in tax cuts which benefit only the rich.
For over a decade the whole public sector has been under attack. Local authority services, schools and transport are all threatened by the dogmatic Tory onslaught. It is this political assault which the New Union ofCOHSE, NALGO and NUPE will be well placed to repel. As a union of 1.5 million strong, a union of providers and consumers of public services, we will dominate the public sector and be too large to ignore. I would like to thank those re-
sponsible for all the hard work that has gone into the months of talks.
The health group will be a crucial part of the New Union. It will be nearly half a million strong and one in six of the New Union's members will be a nurse. And they will have the backing of a powerful, democratic union run by and for the members united in their support for good, efficient and caring public services. At this Conference, we have the chance to help make this
vision a reality.
Over the last two years, many of us havebeen bogged down in clinical grading. The burden of appeal after appeal has taken its toll on our branch secretaries and on our activists. Our membership is declining We now need to reorientate ourselves and to concentrate on maintaining and building on our membership base. New Union or not, we have no future if we fail to recruit and make our presence felt at the workplace.
The Prime Minister has said that staff morale in the NHS has suffered because of Labour lies at Monmouth. But we are not managers and administrators intimidated by short term contracts and performance related pay into political submission. For us Monmouth demonstrated that we have the people solidly behind us in our fight to defend the National Health Service and the
result was the best possible boost to the morale of health service staff for many years,
As a public sector union with a long tradition of affiliation to the Labour Party there can be no greater challenge than the next General Election whenever it comes. Then we have the chance to rid ourselves of a Government hostile to the ethos of public service and the welfare state, hostile to the principles of trade unionism and hostile to air rewards to working people.
At the Election, there will be a simple choice: between a party committed to investment in public services and the creation of a democratically run National Health Service devoid of market principles and a rty committed only to dismantling the public sector and denying its staff a living
wage.
We in COHSE must not just make that choice ourselves, we must work relentlessly to ensure that our members, our families, our friends all fully understand the persistently gradual and devious threat to a freely available NHS. We must deliver an historic victory for Labour — not just in the North and Scotland but country wide. We owe it not only to ourselves but to the health service which our union helped create.
Colin Robinson
COHSE President 1991
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