NHS: Nurses on the road again
When is 'A' grade not a grade?
Now You See it. Now You See a bit it.!!
EMPTY WORDS, broken promises, and the devaluation of the work of dedicated staff:
these are the reasons why thousands of nurses across the country have been protesting since August.
Last spring, bulleled by strikes in February and March, the
Thatcher government ser out to win a hreathing space by saying it accepted and would Imple ment the findings of the nurses
Pay Review
Body.
This included two clements: a basic pay increase, to be followed by further increases from a grading exercise reward nurses more fairly for the work they actually do rather than simply for their paper qualifications.
This regrading was hound to be complicated:
it involves assessing the work of 520,000 nurses for the first time since
1948. But despite real weaknesses in the formula, it conld have heen a step forward, if carried out honcstly, compensating many overworked nurses lor extra duties ar present unpaid.
Instead, the grading exercise has been a farce:
Management in many health authorities have tried to force nurses wholesale onto the lowest possible grades in order to hold down their wage hills. Health Secretary
Kenneth Clarke has hinted darkly that in the name of faimess' he will intervene to push back.
any health authorities whach he judges to have been too generous in grading their nursing staff.
Press attention and Clarke's comments have focussed solely on disputes affecting relatively few ward sisters and top grades: but thousands of nursing auxiliarics who shoulder unpaid extra darly responsibilities are being forced onto the bottom grade A'
UP D Grievances and appoals are being clocked up by the hundred, and the whole set-up is a recipe for chaos.
On September 22, ungry nutsing auxiliaries at Normansfield Hospital in Twickenham staged a one-day strike as a prelude to sustained work to grading" action in protest at heing collectively
AVISES PAY percent AwARD
APRIL 1988 lumped into grade "A'.
Nurses at the Maudsley psychiatric hospital in South Lon don have also staged a 12-day strike over the grading issuc, complaining both over the slow and inadequate implementation of the deal and the fact that the govenment has not yet pledged to underwrite. the Full cost.
As the Maudsley strikers pointed out, none of the regrading can be fairly done if extra govermienl money is not made availabic: lo pay nurses their increases. The ES03m set aside for this in April is clearly insufficient - yet Clarke. Currie and Co. are now retreating from any commitment to fund the
April
perl
Ridge
cadsatrickery
934 Award. 488
NURSES PAY AWARD^
full cost of the pay awards, arguing there can be 'no blank cheque Regional health chairs have now estimated that they will need an extra £200m just to cover costs of the pay dealt their guess is certain to be too low, since it will inchute tens of thousands of gradings which are already contested by the unions and subject to appeals. Already other estimatcy are even higher — as much as £360m
If this moncy is not provided, health authorities will be forced to make more cuts and hed closures
- creating a new autumn crisis:
€200m is the equivalent of up to
20.000 heds closed across the country - four times the number axed in last autumn's crisis wave of closures that kept the NHS in national hcadlines throughout the winter.
Nurses don't want
Their pay increase paid for by cuts: neither do the general public, who.consistently show their support for the NHS and for nurses who fight to defend it
However the union response is weak and divided. While the 'now icalist NUPE is afraid above all of any industrial action and is secking a common fronl with the no-strike Royal
College of Nursing,
COISE leaders lack
Tom Sawyer's ruthless
NUPE bureaucratic strike crushing machine and have allowed their rank and file a little more
Hence it has lee way.
been COHSE members on the ground whe have so far made the running in local protest stop pages.
The radicalisation of nurscs around pay Issucs so closely connected to cuts in service gives new opportunities for those on the left who have missed previous chances to get involved in health campaign work. Now is the time to step up the light for unionisation of murses, and arguing the case for industrial action wherever necessary lo defeat cuts. closures and attempts to renege on the pay settlement.
A looming autumn of struggie must see links made with health unions and the huilding of an active hightback in each locality to defend our NHS:
Harry Sinan