on trolleys. situation for As the winter begins, a BBC survey showed around a third Trusts are expecting to cut or cancel waiting list treatment. Unusually, this time around The main probiem will also see money, but problems spendWing the £630m allocated to pressures" "winter Gordon Brown's budget. More staff are needed, but be NHS pitiful rates of pay have made it increasingly difficult to recruit more nurses. will: the miserable 3.2 perA cent pay offer for most nurses and professional staff in 2001, coupled of the with an even more miserly deal for most lower-paid NHS support staff, seems to TOT older underline the government's refusal to confront the growing problems of attracting and retaining suitable workers to keep services running. Tony Blair's latest cheapskate wheeze - a revamped NHS nurse "bank", and the home promise of subsidised housing or a feeble £600 a year hand-out London and high-cost areas - will be seen as a patronis. irrelevance nurses. They don't want tied Danny Macintosh WHILE families across the after country picked out Christmas turkeys, 600plus Dudley hospital workers were preparing for another round oi strike action over Christmas -and beating back attempts by UNISON officials to cook their goose. In the run-up to the strike UNISON's negotiators recommended a deal to the unions healtn Group Executive that would have called off the strike, in return for a 3.month period of "negotia. tion" on the best way to hand over NHS staff to PFI contractors- - coupled with a UNISON pledge to take no action against the outcome of these talks. Such a deal would have in squandered all of the momentum and political impact of the seven by NHS rounds of solid strike action by Dudley staff since the summer. In the event the deal, be proposed by government negotiators, was rejected by the strikers, and has be made now been withdrawn. pool of Strike action restarted on 13 December and lasted over Christmas and the mental new year. UNISON's NEC lent its hospitals support for a regional day and of action called by the union's West Midlands region on 20 December. The Dudley fight centres launary, on an f80m plan for a new handed privately-funded (PFI) hospital, which would not only result in a loss of beds, but axe jobs and hand hundreds more NHS support by staff over to private conTraCTOrS. The tenacious stand by such a large number of UNISON members has put their national officers on the spot, and they have for the made repeated attempts to end the dispute as the year drew to a close. • Donations and mec. sages of support should be sent to: UNISON Dudley Group of Hospitals, Union Office, Wordsley home Hospital, Stream Road Stourbridge DY8 50X