COHSE fight ow staff levels
Socialist Organiser1982 1982-02-04Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 15 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 15
DESPERATE conditions still existing in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital have resulted in union members unanimously deciding to continue industrial action within the hospital.
The unions have repeatedly approached management over the past few weeks in an. attempt to resolve the low staffing problems. The COHSE branch even suspended their action to give management the opportunity to open negotiations, but met with no response.
A mass meeting of workers was called by the Joint Shop Stewards Com mittee to inform the whole workforce of the dispute.
Management refused to allow the meeting to take place on hospital premises or during working hours, due to the "political" nature of the meeting.
They then said that if the meeting went ahead it would be dispersed with the use of police force. Stewards then organised an outside venue and transport.
However, the day before the mass meeting was due to go ahead, a union full timer who had no previous connection with the dispute came in and with the branch secretary negotiated facilities tor two mass meetings, but only for their own particalar union, leaving the other union out on a limb.
Stewards from the other union negotiated a similar arrangement and a joint union mass meeting was convened.
Despite the confusion the mass meetings were attended by about 350 workers. A union branch meeting held immediately afterwards voted to continue the industrial action.
A six-page document produced by management and read out to the meetings set out to defuse and blur the central aim of the action in the minds of the membership but the members have none of it.
Any attempt by the union bureaucrats to sell out the workers would have been met with firm opposition from the members.
The lesson to be learned from this stage in the dispute is that rank and file members must keep firm control of the actions of their representatives and ensure that they do the job they were mandated to do-to force management to recruit more staff and improve the conditions for staff and patents.
Jean Mcintyre and John Chalmers