THE CUTS Make Torie FIGI ON up by a ballot to consult members ...on whether they want of publicity cam- to be balloted on industrial action on the summer!! individual Even the BMA and Health Visitors seem closer to strike action than UNISON. Yet defence of the NHS is one of the most popular issues around.
With the Tories in terminal crisis, UNISON could organise national strike action of its 400,000 members in health against the pay offer and the break-up of national bargaining.
The Tories would not dare use the anti-union laws against health workers for fear of an escalation that would sweep them out of office just as industrial action defeated Heath's anti-union laws when they imprisoned the Pentonville dockers over 20 years ago Alternative The left in UNISON must continue to promote an alterpay and condi- native strategy: national industrial action now -unlawful if necessary -against the national attacks of the Tories and the bosses, and fighting to commit a Labour government to implement UNISON's policies.
The forthcoming election campaign for general secretary will be an opportunity to argue that UNISON should adopt such a fighting strategy.
At the moment, it appears that the right who support Blair's New Labour do not no commitment to renationalise, but a guarantee to increase the shareholders' profits.
Sequestration Of more immediate impact will be the leadership's position on the anti-union laws. The Post Office have threatened both sequestration and removal of check-off to encourage Alan Johnson to start repudiating unofficial industrial disputes.
The threat of the anti-union laws has clearty limited unofficial industrial disputes in the last two months. This gives the leadership more control. But with management attacks inhave any credible candidate equivalent to Jack Dromey in the TGWU, to put up against Bickerstaffe.
Militant Labour are trying to persuade sections of the left to support their chosen candidate, ex-NALGO NEC member Roger Bannister.
In order to pose an effective challenge to the current leaderships of UNISON, the left should be moving towards a united opposition.
The SWP-led Fightback still refuses to form a united left with the Campaign for a Fighting and Democratic Union. The division of the left makes it easier for UNISON's leadership to avoid building any fightback now.
But there is a more fundamental problem. Both of these two left formations are essentially based on the exNALGO branches.
They need to find ways to link up with the ex-NUPE and ex-COHSE activists, some of whom (especially from ex-NUPE) have come from outside the traditional hard left during the Clause Four fight, discovering that they no longer need vote the way they used to be told by Tom Sawyer, and who have been instrumental in winning UNISON to left wing policies.
The importance of this development must be recog- UNION SPECIAL nised, and further fighting unity established in the struggle to commit the union to take action now against the 'rigours' of the market. are likely to reemerge in the The leadership will be encouraged to challenge in other policy areas to limit the influence of the left in the newlymerged union.
This will mean bringing the union's industrial policy much more directly under the control of the leadership to limit rand and file militancy.
The left has to begin organising against the modernisers in the CWU, challenging the consensus on commercial freedom and unconditionally defending CWU members in struggle.