02.03.1995

An absence of leadership

Maggie Crow, a Unison steward at Christie hospital in Manchester, talks about the prospects for a fightback among nurses

Nurses feel the one percent pay offer has been just another kick in the teeth really. Here, we are just going through a process of voluntary redundancy, so we know this hospital will not pay more. Everyone feels angry that this also seems to be the beginning of local pay bargaining.

Ancillary workers who already have horrendous low pay feel that this is a sign of worse to come for them next year. For nurses short-term contracts are creeping in and low staffing levels make the job very difficult, although here conditions are not as bad as those at the big district hospitals. Skill mix reviews are also being done in a very underhand way to downgrade workers.

In the past taking action has been difficult since nurses feel a moral duty to their patients. But there is a limit to that emotional blackmail and past loyalties to the hospital are being eroded now.

Nurses would take action if there was strong national leadership, but at the moment the RCN is talking more militant that Unison. The trouble with the day of action that Unison has organised on March 30 is that people know it isn’t going to achieve anything. Although nurses won’t necessarily be immediately ready for strike action they do know that it is pretty futile to do anything less. The union is playing into the government’s hands as well by keeping it to local demonstrations rather than giving it the national focus that it needs.

Nurses do want something to happen, but I don’t know how committed they are to doing anything themselves and nobody is taking leadership initiative. A lead from the union would make a difference, but people are feeling very insecure about their jobs so it would take a lot to get any sustained action.

The reforms in the NHS have been brought in so smoothly and sneakily that I think nurses feel quite powerless. People have very little faith in the trade unions because they don’t feel the unions have any power to do anything. They aren’t giving a lead that people can believe in. They do not offer the possibility of any real change.

I think sickness absence is being used as a form of unorganised conflict, because there isn’t any leadership from the unions. Although people may wait for a Labour government, they know it will not make a difference either. There is no other channel for the expression of that discontent.