Joint Branch Secretaries Report    February 8^th 2007-02-07

 

 

Over the last year the Unison has remained the most organised and largest trade union in South Tyneside Health care both in the South Tyneside Foundation Trust, the ST PCT and we have represented members in Private nursing homes and doctors surgeries.   Whilst our members in the F Trust has remained stable in the PCT it increased to over 200. 

 

At the present time the PCT members are facing the biggest challenge yet in the short time the PCTs have been in operation. We are in the middle of a merged management function and cost cutting exercise.   What has been revealed over recent days is that this change driven by the government’s CPLNHS in the name of merging management functions to save on bureaucracy is quite the opposite. It is about creating a top heavy commissioning body which is about buying an selling health care under the cover of cutting management costs and under the cover of making 3 million savings.  

 

We just seen the draft structures.  80 posts going up to band five the most at the lower band. 30 new posts at the high 8cd and an overall increase in top management post s of 26 mainly in commissioning roles.   This seems to being paid  for by the lost of 12 directors and administrative jobs at the sharp end.

 

Our branch has had get better organised in the PCT. We have to active stewards in the PCT one of whom we are proposing takes on the role of PCT officer.   We have already negotiated time off for her which is at the moment two days a week and she has been working very hard on this situation.  Alison McNally.    I would also like to give a mention to our other new steward there Pam Arthur.

 

In the Foundation Trust the branch has had testing time all year.  Not least that we had and are still dealing with a very complicated struggle in the domestic department which included leading  a short strike last year.    Marion, Susan and the domestics stewards have been very active with other problems in the domestic department not just in dealing with management but in uniting both unions involved to solve our common problems.  This has placed a very heavy burden on the branch but none more so than on Marion who has been a tower of strength in spite of her main work on Agenda for Change Job evaluation and now KSF. 

 

Where are we now with the domestics?  What has been positive that we now have a number of domestics that came forward to support Cynthia, Deborrah  in better organising the domestics and a number of domestics that joined with us.  The main problem at the moment is the way the Domestic department is managed and how to respond to that to solve the problems of our members.  It is very important that what was achieved during the strike is defended - we not speaking of the  result which was really a stalemate  -  but  organisation that came from the strike. 

 

After the struggle of the domestics we have to mention the struggle all year to represent members in their reviews for Agenda for Change.  As you know we not only had Marion in the Agenda for Change office as JE lead but also we gave over our resources to maximising every ones case in the branch office.   Also, to mention the stewards and members who who took on the JE role the support we have had from our employee Val Davidson in the Branch office has all contributed to this .   I don’t know what the recent figures are but to the end of last year we had and overall success of 78%. We are still getting successes.  This strategy for JE lead and advocate lead has worked very well and I would like you to thank all of those who have worked so hard to make this work successful.

 

Having said this I think it is important to mention where we have not been successful. Firstly, you have to understand that in the scheme of things the agenda in modernising pay through agenda for change was damage limitation in the face of organised labour, equal pay claims and so on. In the PCT by getting administrative staff to re-apply for their own jobs they have with a stroke wiped out many gains through reviews.    So, we have to be on our guard.

 

Secondly, we feel, and this is common to most acute trusts, that the auxiliary nurses have been deliberately undervalued by management in Agenda for Change.  We are now seeing where proper training was once in place for them to undertake their role this training is in my view being deliberately paired down to justify a lower Knowledge and skills element.     I don’t reproach us because our branch has fought harder over the last 12 months that anyone and especially in the hospital to try and negotiate a career structure for the auxiliaries but where we are constantly lacking is that we have failed to gain nursing stewards both auxiliary and trained that can champion the cause of the nurses, their training, their pay, staffing levels and their well being.   Management have put in place nursing managers over recent years some of them ex-union that run the services with absolutely no slack and less than no slack.   

 

If there is one area that we have failed to make and impact, and that is not for want of trying it is amongst our nursing members precisely because with a few notable exceptions they have been ground down by a very costly dictat arrangement.   There is no other way to describe the situation.   Every reform has become under the guise of dealing with bureaucracy increases that arrangement.  Modern matrons – They got the public on their side over that one for instance.  But the reality it was another layer of management on a huge wage  to ensure wards are ground down to keep within a so-called budget.     When problems come we don’t see these people. We see the ones sent in to fire fight - some so task orientated and dyed in the wool to do whatever they are told. Others both hard working, capable and people orientated managers who find it hard to take the unbearable pressure not from our members but from the oppressive dictat from above.  This is the new regime in the NHS.    

 

 This leads on to the whole fight that we have taken up as a branch against the agenda of modernisation and reform and the motion we have sent to Health Conference which will now have to go to National conference on health care as a right

 

Today, it is a struggle between a rationally planned publicly owned health service and the emergence of the “regulated” health care market.  Today, the most the government will utter is that health care is “free at the point of use”- which is a lie - precisely while they try and eliminate the memory of that right.

 

Nowhere has this struggle been so clearly seen in the deception of how the NHS is funded. Firstly, there is the irrational conception of declaring that health care is a commodity to be costed bought and sold in the health care market and in billions of tax payers money that is being used in creating this internal market. 

 

Secondly, the whole question of how the NHS is funded is obscured.  The NHS is being compared to a “business model”. Every part of it is being broken up along this “lean business” model lines.  Financial “deficits” are being assigned to its operations as if it functions like a business producing “health care commodities”.  

 

A persons health cannot be measured in terms of whether that operation allegedly costs so much for the “market in health” but that they have a right to be treated with the best treatment  available to society which cannot be quantified by the crude market mechanisms.   Such mechanisms are purely designed to provide monopoly right, the right of huge profits at the expense of the right to health care for all.

 

The rational approach that health care is a fundamental right of the people resident in the society and that their health has first claim on the wealth of society – not just on taxation but its gross income. 

 

Any way these ideas are our greatest strength and they are a reality .  In Venezuela it is these ideas that are expanding the public sector for example. In Britain and Iraq and many other countries where public health care is being dismantled so that the public purse finds its way into the coffers of multinational companies they fear that these ideas may be taken up. So they invent ideas like patient led NHS, Improving working lives and all these terms to fool people.   But people are not being fooled. 

 

Like to conclude by saying that at our last branch committee we reported back on the Regional Council and that our motion had been ruled out because the issue we wanted to raise about the victimisation of Yunus Bahksh by his employer was sub judice because of some allegations against Yunus within Unison.  I think a lot of us feel vulnerable in dealing with management if the Trust gets away with this accusation and the way it has been done against Yunus.  We agreed to write an open letter of support to Yunus offering our solidarity  and that has been done. 

 

Finally, we would like to reaffiliate to the Trades Council and the May day committee. This year also would like to suggest that we also affiliate to our local stop the war coalition and ant racist coalition.

 

We would like to thank all the stewards, our treasurer, health and safety officer and officers of the branch, Val Davidson our branch support worker for their contribution throughout the year. 

 

Thank you