AFTER MORE than 2 years of struggle, a partial victory at least is in sight for striking workers at Hillingdon Hospital. A representative of Pall Mall, the company that sacked the strikers, has written to at least 20 of strikers conceding that they were unfairly dismissed.
Their case will now go back to the Industrial Tribunal in the middle of May, but the admission from Pall Mall will mean that a settlement in their favour is almost certain.
Having been refused support for continuing the strike from their own UNISON branch, the Hillingdon women had their branch membership revoked under the cover of a union rule that says that members who have been unemployed for over 2 years do not have an automatic right to remain in the branch.
This victory is a testament to a courageous struggle that could have been ended years ago if the national leadership of UNISON had put in half as much time and energy into supporting their dispute as it did in trying to prevent the strikers even speaking at various union conferences.
UNISON officials withdrew official support for their dispute at the beginning of January 1997 year after they failed to impose a settlement that the strikers had already rejected. Since then the only official support has been to fund lawyers to mount the legal challenge to Pall Mall.
Whilst UNISON is supposedly a "member-led" union, the national leadership were not preSpared to allow the strikers to even have a say in whether or not to continue the strike.
The strike started when Pall Mall tried to impose an attack on pay and conditions on the already low paid workers. UNISON leaders constantly talk. about defending the interests of low paid workers, of part-time workers, of black people and of women members of the union.
This dispute has shown that their interests can only be defended through militant action. It also shows that the current UNISON leadership is incapable of leading such a struggle.
PALL MALL OUT