منظمة البديل الشيوعي في العراق تنظيم شيوعي عمالي منهجه الفكري والسياسي ماركسي مستنبط من “البيان الشيوعي”
Sherine Abdullah
18.12.2022
On 15.12.2022, the Royal College of Nursing* RCN in the United Kingdom began, for the first time in its 106-year history, to organize the largest nationwide strikes of nursing staff, it is estimated that 100,000 of its members in England, Northern Ireland and Wales will participate in what is expected to be the first stage of strikes over wages, working conditions and patient safety – strikes were held on the 15th and 20th of December, and it is expected that this will be just the beginning of a longer period of strikes if formal negotiations do not take place, or they do not produce a satisfactory outcome. Paramedics, ambulance staff, firefighters, and junior doctors will also join them later.
The Royal College of nursing, in the words of its general secretary, Pat Cullen, is calling for 19% increase in wages (5% above inflation), improving working conditions to ensure staff retention and attract new staff to the profession, and ensuring patient safety.
These strikes are among a series of strikes that are sweeping many of the major sectors in Britain today, their impact on the country’s economy is estimated at more than 1.4 million working days, in which railway workers, higher education staff, lecturers and non-academics, Royal Mail workers, civil servants in the Home Office, some bus drivers, court staff and others participate. This wave of strikes comes against the backdrop of more than a decade of freezing public sector salaries, squeezing public services and social care and social security benefits because of neoliberal policies and subjugating all public services, including health, education, social security, postal service, and transportation… etc. to the laws of the market and competition and the accumulation of profits at the expense of the impoverished millions.
Reports indicate that at the beginning of this year, there were 22% of citizens in Britain living in poverty. A few million, including half a million children, suffered from destitution (extreme poverty) in the 12 months before the Covid-19 pandemic. Destitution is considered one of the worst states of poverty in which a person lacks everything that can guarantee housing, clothing, food and heating, and that the situation is getting worse and he fears that this winter will be dark and harsh for large segments of British society in every sense of the word.
Reasons and repercussions of the nurses’ strike:
Wages and working conditions:
Large numbers of nurses left the profession in recent years due to low wages, but wages are not the only reason. College members, like all health and social care staff in Britain, suffer from extreme fatigue due to the pressures of relentless work, and that this pressure has exacerbated to a large extent during the Covid-19 pandemic. Because of these conditions, it is difficult to fill job vacancies, which increases the burden on the employees remaining in the profession.
A statement submitted by the RCN to the UK Parliament in January 2022 indicates that there are 39,813 (average 10.5%) vacancies in the nursing workforce in England currently in the National Health Service NHS.
The statement also indicates that the nursing cadres in the NHS are not rewarded fairly for their high degree of professional skills and professional risk compared to other professions and the private sector.
The demand for an increase in wages by 19% is to overcome the deductions in real terms because of the policies of Efficiency Savings and the freezing of salaries for the public sector since 2010 until now. As a result of these policies, the salary situation of experienced nurses has become worse by 29% (compared to 2010). Reports confirm that even if nurses get the 19%, the real value of their wages will be less than in 2010.
Nursing and working women’s rights:
The nursing profession has historically been a profession for women, in which the finest human traits are combined with professional skill and scientific application. Despite the changes in this trend and the joining of many men to the profession in our time, and despite the immense scientific developments that have taken place since the days of Florence Nightingale, the pioneer of modern nursing, the traditional view still prevails, which sees the profession as a service or a “humane calling” or “a duty of good heart”, that women do out of dedication and love to help others, instead of viewing it as a gender-neutral profession, that must be renumerated according to the high level of professional skill, physical, psychological and mental effort, and this view is what contributed to the downgrading of the profession and the demoralising of its staff.
It is always difficult to organize a strike for health staff, since stopping work, even for a short period, will directly affect the lives of patients. Since most workers in this field engage in it with humanitarian motives and out of love for helping others, it is very difficult for them to leave their patients in a time of need. A strike in a hospital or medical clinic is not like a strike in a car factory, for example.
Hence, the health systems, not only in Britain, but all over the world, exploit the good will, dedication to patient care, the spirit of sacrifice of their cadres, and violate their professional rights. The inferior view of women in prevailing patriarchal societies strengthens and nourishes this pattern of dealing with the profession.
The low and unequal wages and rights of women in all sectors are evident in the nursing sector, but the woman nurse is a working woman like any other worker, and she has the right to strike and demand equal rights and be paid for her work according to what she deserves.
Policies that create a divide between strikers and the public:
Governments are taking advantage of this point to stir up public opinion against the striking workers and reduce people’s sympathy for any strike of the medical staff and weaken and disperse their ranks, as happened in the general strike of the nurses in 1988, when Thatcher accused the striking workers of being “deliberately against patients” and “increasing the burden on Nurses who would never dream of going on strike because they will not abandon their patients”. Similarly, the current British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, denounced the current strikes, saying that they are “a great threat to toiling families,” as if the health workers, nurses, ambulance, railway, transportation, and postal workers were not from toiling families and individuals, and were outside this classification. Thus, governments are trying to sow discord between sectors of the protesting masses and disperse their ranks, but the masses have become aware of this, and sympathy for strikers’ issues in general is increasing day by day.
Nurses are accused of abandoning and not caring about the safety of their patients, but the strikers say that their patients are dying now because of the poor working conditions, job pressures, the lack of workers compared to the number of patients, and excessive bureaucracy. And that it is their responsibility to raise their voice now to protect their patients, the future of their profession and the future of the National Health Service.
Strike and organization as an important means to achieve demands and achieve an egalitarian society:
Strikers know that strikes are a proven way to bring about change. A strike by members of the Royal College of Nursing in Northern Ireland in 2019 helped achieve pay parity with England and Wales. Although the 1988 strike did not achieve parity in wages with other professions or improve working conditions, Thatcher was forced at the time to raise wages by 15.3%. The limitation of daily working hours and the right to the weekend are only gains of the organized struggles of the past two centuries.
Achieving the demands of nurses in Britain will be a great achievement and strengthen the resolve of other sectors with the possibility of achieving their demands. In addition, it will help raise the status of nursing as a highly skilled profession in which science is embraced for the benefit of human health and well-being, rather than greed and profit, and since women occupy the largest proportion of this profession, any advancement towards approaching parity in wages and working conditions could be a step towards achieving women’s equality and a standard that can be looked up to all over the world.
We must all stand in solidarity with the struggle of nurses in Britain.
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* The Royal College of Nursing in Britain is the largest nursing union in the world. It is both a professional body and a trade union. It has more than 450,000 members of nursing staff, midwives, students, and nursing assistants.
It is worth noting that the Royal College of Nursing had a policy of preventing strikes until 1995, and the college denounced the 1988 strike that was initiated by mental health nurses and spread throughout the country at the time.
