By Left Horizons supporters in Unite
Here, Andy Ford outlines his reasons for standing for the health section of the Unite NEC:
I am standing in this election because I passionately believe that the union should spend a lot more money and take a lot more trouble over its own grass roots – the reps and the branches – and less on grandiose projects and highly paid staff positions. We must prioritise being industrially effective in the NHS.
I have been a biomedical scientist now for over 30 years and was the rep in the Liverpool Blood Centre, where we organised a campaign that secured a £20 million new blood centre for Liverpool and got the CEO removed. I am now the rep at the Manchester Blood Centre and the national convenor, so I can see how the union is performing across the country.
The neglect of the reps and branches has resulted in a very patchy pattern of organisation in the hospitals and trusts, with many extremely well organised and effective areas, but also the sad and shocking spectacle of hospitals where we have members and recognition – but no reps.
The effect is that they act as a drag on the rest, with low ballot turnouts, and poor terms and conditions. Unorganised workplaces soak up a disproportionate amount of full-time officers’ time, as they spend too much time on individual case work and not enough on building the union in the workplace.
Non-functioning, moribund branches
One third of Unite members are in non-functioning, moribund branches. Under the old regime, no-one actually seemed to even care about this situation, and under the new regime too little progress has been made.
This can be corrected – but only if the will is there! All we need to do is to open up our union structures to ALL the reps, not just the ones on the various committees. It was how the unions were built in the first place.
In practical terms, every region should organise a quarterly meeting of all the reps in health to support each other and defend our members’ terms and conditions. Every functioning branch should be able to send a delegate to conference.
That is the way to be industrially effective. Not waiting around for a full-time officer to sort it all out. In many trusts now, ‘long term’ pay protection is down to just a year. Draconian sick policies are becoming the norm.
On the Labour Party, Keir Starmer’s leadership has been disastrous for the NHS. The refusal to sort out adult social care means that none of the fundamental problems are being dealt with – so we still see long ambulance waits, horrendous queues in A&E, and now a rebirth of PFI under a different name.
Recent events have shown that the leadership of the Labour Party has been captured by a tiny clique of manipulative individuals, whose main aim is to become personally very rich.
But the answer is not to just complain, let alone storm out of the Party into the wilderness, but to organise to change the Labour Party’s policies back to something like the policies passed by Unite at our conferences – to properly fund adult social care, pay NHS staff properly, to put more beds into hospitals, and to end privatisation and out-sourcing once and for all.
If that means forcing a change of Labour leadership, then fine. We need a properly funded, organised and resourced campaign to save the Labour Party from the clique who have seized control of it.
Build the union! Look after the reps and branches and then we can defend NHS workers!
…………………………………………………………………
Andy Ford’s election campaign website, with information and articles, is here. Feature photograph is from this website.
