Support Manchester Mental Health Workers. All Out Against The Attacks!

Around 80 people joined a lively 3 hour demonstration on the third day of the disciplinary against Manchester mental health worker and Unison branch chair Karen Reissmann.

The trust are trying to sack Karen for a very simple reason- she is an effective leader of a trade union that has resisted with a large measure of success attacks on services in the appallingly underfunded mental health sector, scuppering so far attempts to push through all the cuts management want.

However, the union branch has shown exemplary spirit in fighting back to save Karen's job and to continue to organise for better mental health services.

The branch in a mass meeting has voted to go out on all out indefinite strike action from the end of the disciplinary unless Karen's job is guaranteed. Activists from other unions joined the picket with speakers from the CWU and the NUT. I made the point form Bolton NUT that we would support the fight of the Unison strikers all the way and that it was part of a wider fight for decent public services under the control of workers and service users, and should be linked both to the national demo on November 3rd and the looming public sector pay fights, reporting that a recent rank and file teachers' meeting had voted to not cross Unison picket lines in the schools and colleges. If we fight together and respect each others' picket lines we can win.

If the mental health workers continue to control their struggle by mass meetings and weekly strike activists meetings then they can win. Massive support from the rank and file of the trade union movement has built up a strike fund of tens of thousands of pounds to sustain action, and an indefinite all-out strike would mean posing the question very concretely to the working class of Manchester and beyond- who should be running the NHS? Privateers and financiers intent on introducing the market or should we have a service determined by medical need run by NHS workers and users?

These are the arguments that should be taken on to the streets of Manchester and London on November 3rd. The strike committee is calling a public meeting next Wednesday 31st October 12.30 p.m. in the Town Hall and all workers in the council officers who can should attend. We should also demand that the local Manchester MPs attend or at the very least send a statement of support to speak out against this outrageous treatment of a trade unionist.

Mental health service sin Manchester are a disgrace though nothing particularly unusual in an 'NHS' that is being run along market lines as if a price can be put on health and people's needs and lives are just calculations in accountants' targets for saving money.

There is a crisis of beds with many patients being left in their own houses despite needing urgent treatment. The trust have operated on red bed status for the last three years, meaning routine patient admissions are suspended, with even patients being put on waiting lists to be treated even if they are seen as a t very high risk of self-harm. Occupancy rates are routinely at 120% meaning a 20 bed admission ward having 24 patients. Recent changes in community health teems meant that over 500 vulnerable people no longer have a key worker and over a 1000 had their key worker changed. Despite all this an elderly ward has been closed, despite exponential increase in the incidence of mental health problems in the elderly, and Withington hospital closure meant the loss of a further 45 beds with new Private Finance Initiative (PFI) beds in Wythenshawe costing four times as much as NHS beds in North Manchester. And on top of all this managers want to push for another £5million of cuts over the next year.

This then is an issue that affects all of us. Even in the most extreme cases of public safety often little can be done because of the market inefficiency that insists on privatising services even tough they're far more expensive and less effective.

Is this the way the people of Manchester or any other town or place deserve to be treated? That's why it is essential that everyone rallies to support the mental health workers to say enough is enough, we demand our services back, we demand to see where all the money is going, and what is happening. Whilst the government spends billions bombing hospitals and schools in Iraq and Afghanistan it is busy slashing the health budgets here without a care for the needs of ordinary working class people wherever they live. In the end, this is an issue about class and this is why we need a fighting trade union movement to help deliver better public services under public control. The mental health workers have shown the way to fight and deserve the support of all trade unionists, socialists and working class activists.

The disciplinary to sack Karen is continuing on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of next week, with strike action planned tom coincide with these days and indefinite all out strike from the Friday, subject to approval from the Unison industrial action committee. Activists in Unison must raise this matter once again in their branches, bombard headquarters with messages of support and demand that the mental health workers' action is supported. In addition, it is about time that the Unison rank and file and united left begin to get really organised, to form joint strike committees with CWU, PCS, NUT and other unions' rank and file activists and begin to create a movement that can win.

Reinstate Karen Reissmann now! Support the Manchester Mental Health Workers' Strike.

For Decent Free Public Services Under the Control of Workers and Service Users

Come to The Meeting on Wednesday 31st October, 12.30 p.m. Manchester Town Hall or send message of support

Support the November 3rd national demo,

Tue 23, October 2007 @ 14:33