| The Unison Health Care Conference 2012 opens this week in Brighton. The conference takes place at a crucial time for all working in the health service in Britain. Over the last year since the last conference, the union has been one of the main forces in the massive organised opposition to demand that the Coalition government drop the Health and Social Care Bill. The bill was eventually rail-roaded through Parliament to get the Royal Assent on March 27. This week delegates will be discussing how to continue the resistance to the implementation of the Act which is aimed at further opening up the NHS to further fragmentation and handing over provision and commissioning of services to the private sector monopolies. The conference theme Our NHS Our Future captures the need at this time to safeguard the future of the NHS, take forward the resistance of health workers and professionals and plant the alternative that a health care is a right that must be given a guarantee and publicly provided to meet the needs of all. That government now claims to have some legal force with its Health and Social Care Act to wreck the NHS in favour the “right” of the monopolies to profit from health care. This must be countered by the legitimacy of all sections of the people that public right must prevail over the monopoly right that the coalition government is championing in health. The prevalence of monopoly right over public right gives no future to the NHS and to the right of the people to health care and has no legitimacy. The health workers and all sections of the people are fighting for the public good in opposing the implementation of the Health and Social Care Act and in fighting to safeguard the future of the NHS. This week Unison health worker delegates sum up the their experiences in their struggles over the last year against the Coalition government and discuss and plan how to take their resistance forward to the attacks on the NHS and on their pay, pensions and other terms and conditions. The discussion focus groups and motions concentrate on these issues. They give an important opportunity to build the organised resistance to the implementation of Health and Social Care Act, to the attacks on pay, pensions and other terms and conditions, whilst at the same time also on the fight for the alternative that has been the question taken up for solution by the whole working class movement since 2011. Among the important focus groups there are: Campaigning against privatisation in the new NH$ which has the “aims to find out ways to challenge and confront the privatisation and fragmentation presented by the Bill”; Any qualified provider: how will it affect you? which points out that many health services will be commissioned via this model in 2012 and that the “government has stated that TUPE will not apply if a provider fails under this model and staff will be forced to look new work on the open market”; Defending Agenda for Change which takes up the issue that the government having imposed spending cuts and wage freezes now intends to impose changes to the national agreement and impose local pay and conditions in an attempt to destroy further the livelihood of health workers; Pensions – the next steps which will outline the latest steps in the pension campaign “as well as looking at how we can protect NHS pensions in the future”. Among the motions there are: NHS Reforms and the threat of Privatisation moved by the Health Service Group Executive which among other things calls for developing "an organising strategy to meet the new challenges for the union presented by Any Qualified Provider”; and the Invest in Health Care – Stop the Bill moved by Gateshead health which calls for the fight for the alternative. “The alternative is to stop using the economy to pay the rich and instead invest in health care and other social programmes.” These and other motions have been composited in composite F. The Unison Health Care Conference runs from Monday to Wednesday. WWIE wishes every success to the delegates in their deliberations. See UNISON Health Care – Our NHS Our Future: http://www.unison.org.uk/ournhs/ |