Brent DHA fight crumbles
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-11-17Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 3 →
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 3
without a whimper had not the DHA resisted cuts in September. Things started perking up, but it was too little and too late.
LPH was due to close on the fth. A picket line organised by NUPE and sparsely manned by hospital workers and local trade unionists turned away LAS ambulances sent to empty the hospital.
The picket was always understaffed and despite rising confidence in the hospital, was only _ORaRa.ΠΆ faults and fighting for repairs is the precondition of having a strong fight.
2) Keep out agency staff and under no circumstances allow management to introduce short term contracts.
3) Build and maintain strong shop stewards organisation at hospital, local, regional and national level. Every section should have stewards to form the basis of an occupation committee or the leadership of sympathetic strike action.
4) Occupy to stop closures - a picket line at the gate won't IT APPEARS that the anti-cuts stand made by Brent District Health Authority is crumbling.
This is largely due to the approaches made by Mike Jackson, the full-time NUPE official, to the vice-chair, Reverend Haslam of the DHA, to find a mechanism not to have the 'generalist' members dismissed by the Regional Health Authority.
The likely compromise is to accept a budget cut of a quarter of a million pounds but hold firm against staffing cuts and privatisation. This represents a retreat from a position of total opposition to cuts taken at the September and October meetings.
The rebel generalist members who can be hired and fired" at the whim of the DHSS via the RHA, were an odd assortment of SDP, Liberals, ex-Labour councillors, TUC appointees and a friend of Rhodes Boyson!
It was obviously only a matter time until they copped out. The likely cop-out will therefore only change the terrain of the struggle tem the DHA front Coming cuts (as opposed to last year's cuts) involve the threat to the casualty department at Wembley Hospital and cutbacks all around.
The District has absorbed the staff turnover with the use of short-term contracts and agency staff, and last year were found to be employing 216 below their maximum staff quota.
Nevertheless, 110 jobs
many in the nursing and medical sector - are under threat and if the DHA retreats on the budget question, jobs and more swingeing cuts next year will follow on.
The next DHA meeting will be on Monday 21st at 5.30 in Central Middlesex Hosptal. It will be lobbied by those in the community and the unions who don't see gentlemanly agreements and dirty deals as a way to fight the cuts.