photo: Richard Searle

Claire: I think so, they’re bound to be, if you’ve got 150 workers out on strike it’s going to make a big difference. And obviously, because this is a legal strike, the management hold accountability for the cover of the care of people. Also, I think it would not be a very attractive option for anybody to want to come and work for Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust at the moment. And I don’t think it’s a very attractive option for tenders at the moment either, given the chaos that we’re in. So I’m sure it’s bound to be having some sort of effect.

maybe Sheila Foley expected to go off to Dubai, come back and it would be all over?

Claire: I would presume that, obviously I can’t say that, but it gave that impression.

how did she look when she turned up on the early morning?

Claire: she looked quite ruffled, I thought. She looked quite determined to push through us. I don’t think she felt that she had any option but to come out and say “yes, I’ll speak to the union” because there were cameras and journalists there. But now that that door is apparently opened, I’m hopeful that we can resolve something with the union, and with the Trust, to get us back to work. We want to get back to work. We want to see our patients. But what can we do? We’ve got to stay and stick this out. We want to stick this out because it isn’t right unless Karen’s back.

Obviously, we see it’s very much about the union, about whether or not we have a union, and so it’s very important that we win this dispute.

I think we need to keep widening it, to get lots of support from other trade unionists and the community, and I also think that political pressure is very important, we need the support of people who can put pressure on Sheila Foley to reinstate Karen, that’s what’s going to happen.

she’d have to admit that she was wrong, wouldn’t she?

Pat: Yes, that’s true, but ultimately it won’t be her decision, will it, if there’s people higher up who say that this has to be resolved. We want to get back to work, we want to work with our clients, but we think it’s totally wrong in 2007 that our Branch Chair can be sacked for speaking out in defence of the NHS, and against privatisation.

I hope you’re right that other people will intervene and tell Sheila Foley that it’s time to change her mind. Is there any sign of that?

Pat: Well I don’t think that they’re going to be telling us, from her point of view. I think we’re very determined, we have enormous support on our side. I think she has a vision of an NHS which is a privatised NHS and I think people can disagree with her, and the fact is trade unionists do have a right to speak out.

Currently we’re entering our 7th week of indefinite action against the Council’s proposals to re-evaluate our jobs under the Single Status agreement. Now, they have allocated us with new job profiles, but this Job Profile doesn’t recognise the complexity of our work and doesn’t value us as individuals. It also has a detriment pay of between £3, 000 for ground level workers and £6, 000 at a manager’s level.

This is an official UNISON dispute with the Council. 270 Day Care workers are currently taking this all out indefinite strike.

how are the Council dealing with this?

Sobiah: They haven’t actually done anything, they’re not willing to negotiate with us unless we go back to work. We are out on strike because of the allocation of a wrong Job Profile, but the Council now wants to push Service Redesign into negotiations. We are not opposing Service Redesign, however, Service Redesign currently means the closure of 7 Day Care units and the possible loss of 50 to 80 Day Care workers’ positions.

so have they brought in people to scab the strike or are they just leaving it?

Sobiah: They’re using private agencies to undermine our strike and cover our work.

Kathy Ready: Mainstay is a big one

Sobiah: East End Carers are another one, and I’m not sure and I don’t want to name anybody else because I’m not sure.

are they unionised?

Deborah Smith: No, they’re actually breaking a law just now, they should be fined for this, but obviously their fine will be minimum

Sobiah: they will be fined £2, 000 and given a wee slap on the wrist but that’s after this is done, and £2, 000 is nothing for what they’re making out of this.

they haven’t threatened to sack you, at this stage?

Sobiah: not yet!

Deborah: not as yet.

are you happy with the way the union is handling it?

Sobiah: they’re right behind us

photo: Mark, Oxford

have you got a lot of public support for the dispute?

Kathy: the media’s been hushed up, I think.

Sobiah: Because Glasgow City Council pay a lot of the newspapers to advertise jobs etc., they’re saying well we can’t cover your dispute because Glasgow Council will take the money, they’ll pull their money from us.

Deborah: We done a few big rallies and we gave STV a few absolutely fabulous interviews, the reporters that day told us it would be on the news, we watched the news, there was nothing.

Kathy: well they’ve been hushed.

Is the Scottish Parliament involved in this issue in any way?

Sobiah: We have lobbied the Scottish Parliament, and a motion is to be put forward for debate under the Business Debate, and we have been backed by 13 cross-party MSP’s in Glasow, but we don’t know as yet how far we can take that.

What we’re finding just now is we go to different organisations, other union branches, we give a wee talk, and the support is there for us. When you explain the dispute verbally to the public, they’re right behind you 100%. What they’re asking is “how can the Council do this?” A lot of people did assume we wanted more money. But see when you explain your circumstances they’re fully behind us, including our carers as well.

photo: Caroline Bedale

If you go from where I work, through the Blackwall tunnel into Kent, you’ll find there, in the Medway towns, Ambridge, hundreds of people who’ve died over the last several years because of infections in hospitals caused by privatisation of cleaning. And if healthworkers can’t speak up about cuts and privatisation which are damaging for patients, then how can we hope to defend the NHS? I think it’s a vital dispute for everybody.

you’re referring to the C. difficile infections. What does it have to do with privatisation?

John: Well, they privatised hospital cleaning many years ago, and they cut back the number of cleaners, they cut back on the cleaning. The consequence is you have hospitals in a filthy state, and patients die as a result. That’s an effect of privatisation, putting profit before patients.

this is also a free speech issue here.

John: absolutely right. Yes. And it’s important that trade unionists have the right to speak up, have the right to speak up against things that affect them as workers, have the right to speak up about things that affect users of the health service. So it’s a vital dispute for everybody here.

Everyone in the public services faces increasingly cuts, privatisation or both. So I think that every public sector worker will relate immediately to this dispute. In our branch we’ve been collecting for this dispute, we’ve collected over £500, I think that’s because people immediately understand that it affects them as well.

is there pressure on PCS reps as well to keep their heads down, which is obviously what the health service wanted Karen to do?

PCS: Of course, we’ve got a situation in Liverpool at the moment as well, with one of our reps, and I think we need to link in with this campaign so that it’s not just the NHS, it’s right across the public service that these attacks are happening on our reps.

One of our Branch Secretaries is up on a Disciplinary over an incident where they’ve raised concerns over what’s happening within the Civil Service.

The Government have got a programme of 104, 000 cuts and we’ve already taken 2 days of strike action against those cuts and calling for No Compulsory Redundancies, and also looking for pay rises in line with inflation or above, instead of having the pay cuts imposed on us.

So if they get away with sacking Karen, it means nobody will be able to go public and criticise their own employer, even if that’s completely in line with the policy of their union. It’s an absolute disgrace, and it’s something that the trade union movement and the working class movement cannot stand by and allow to happen.

Her real crime of course is organising a lot of people to come out and take action to stop the cuts, and that’s why they want to get rid of her, but I think this has got to be just the start of a campaign which must be known to everybody in this country. It’s an absolutely fundamental attack on trade union rights, and we have to mobilise throughout the whole country to get Karen reinstated and stop this happening to any more people.

photo: Mark, Oxford

how is UNISON actually pursuing this dispute and what do you think has to happen inside UNISON in order to win it?

Martin: I gather than UNISON nationally is giving its support and it’s good to see officials from UNISON here at the rally showing that the union is supporting, they certainly haven’t given the same support to other people like Yunus Bakhsh for instance who ended up in the same boat, but I think what they’ve got to do for a start is to get a lot more information out to branches and organisations around the union who probably aren’t even aware that this has happened. And then they can call for nationwide protests, demonstrations, lobbying, to get Karen reinstated. They have to make this a major national priority for the union.

when you read Health Secretary Alan Johnson’s replies to the letters, he says is it’s in a local process, and the union have to make it clear, it’s not a local issue!

Martin: I completely agree with that, this is not a local issue, this is not just a dispute between one UNISON activist and her employer, this is a fundamental attack on trade union rights. The fact that Mick Gavan, down in London, has been sacked this week, a local government activist for UNISON, suggests that there is a beginning of a feeling amongst sections of the employers that it’s open season and that they can in fact sack union activists for just that, for being union activists. And a lot of activists in the union need to realise, or we need to realise that none of us are safe if we allow this to happen.

photo: Caroline Bedale

what’s the situation in Cambridge for the health service?

Chris Bailey in Cambridge was very keen on the “I’m Spartacus” tactic. We’re not all Karen Reissmann, we haven’t done what Karen has done, we don’t all have the strength of organisation shown here in Manchester, but in my opinion the response has got to be for thousands and thousands of people to say “I’m ready to speak out against this too”.

photo: Caroline Bedale

Martin: Absolutely right. I think that’s absolutely right. I think the answer to an attack like this is not for people to retreat in their shells and say they’ve got to be more careful, but to say listen, if they’re going to pick on one person for doing that, we all do need to speak out and speak up in defence of the NHS.

I think there are a lot of people, ordinary people, not particularly politically motivated, who would be prepared to do that. But they are looking for leads from the unions, they haven’t been getting much, we had the demonstration in London which was good but it was very small and it was far too late. There needs to be a much more concerted campaign in defence of the NHS, that, I think, is also part of the answer to this attack on Karen Reissmann.

anything else?

Martin: yes, the other thing I’d like to say is that for this campaign to win, these strikers need huge support and they need money, big money, big time and regular committments and that’s one of the first things that we’ve got to do, the unions, UNISON and the other unions need to do, and to get out and make sure that there’s enough money coming in to stop these people being forced back to work because they can’t afford to stay out.

photo: Caroline Bedale

do you think that UNISON is fighting hard enough to actually win this dispute at the moment?

Alison: It’s really good today that there are leaders of the union here, that needs to be kept up, you can see here at this demonstration today that there’s support from right across the country from UNISON branches, and that needs to be reflected at national level as well.

We know the dispute must be won. But can we win it, and what do we actually need to do?

Alison: Well I think we need to start looking at what is actually going to expose the actions of the people who have sacked Karen, so we need to start taking action that puts pressure on them in terms of the contracts that they win, the ratings that they get. Taking action that will threaten that will put pressure on the Chief Executive. So things like investigating how their contracts are negotiated, and involving groups of workers who will put pressure in those areas, I think. But also, making it into a national issue so starting to organise more national action, more national days of support, more national solidarity has to happen.

There’s no grey areas here, it’s a very very clear victimisation, and these things have to happen because otherwise this is going to be mirrored across the country.

the Government have to see that they’ve got a huge dispute on their hands if they don’t sort this out.

Alison: yes

healthworkers sometimes fear that the public will be very hostile to any industrial action. But the media locally is backing the dispute.

photo: Richard Searle

Alison: My experience as a healthworker is that we do have a massive amount of support from the public, and that if the unions manage to be clear about what our disputes are about, then we will get backing.

I think healthworkers genuinely worry about the effect industrial action will have on patients, because people who are working in front line NHS jobs care about the patients and they are worried about the problems that are caused in service provision when they take action, but we provide emergency cover and at the end of the day, the extent that management are going to, at the moment, to cut services, it’s them that’s threatening patient care, not us, and we have to get that across very strongly.

Especially with the things that the union has managed to expose around the way patients in this area have been treated, I think that has allowed the union to come up on top, because management clearly don’t care about patients at all in this case, the way they’ve been acting. Throughout the NHS it’s the unions and the people who work on the front line that are actually bothered about patients. If we can keep getting that message across then I think we will get strong backing from the public, definitely.

any message to UNISON members who aren’t here today?

Alison: I think if people think about an equivalent situation in their local branch, where a person has spoken out on their behalf and fought for members, if that person was sacked then how would they respond? Well they have to respond in the same way to this case, because as we’ve said, if it happens here and they’re allowed to get away with it, it’s going to start happening anywhere where people raise their heads. That’s the reason why it’s happened here, because the branch, and Karen in particular, have raised their heads and they’ve stood up against the cuts, so it’s going to happen across the country unless we stand by Karen and make sure that she gets her job back.

These delegations are carrying with them a powerful message of workers solidarity and they are shaking many passive stewards committees to the core. Their role is crucial.

Is UNISON fighting hard enough to win this, and what should the union do now?

Mark: I think that this fight is definitely winnable - when the Strategic Health Authority tried to impose United Health Inc on the people of Oxfordshire we launched a broad community campaign and won! The Chief Exec of the SHA subsequently failed to get a job in the new reorganised SHA. Strong local campaigns can and do win.

The tensions in the union regarding the Karen Reissmann case are currently being resolved by acting as if the case is a little local difficulty in Manchester. This way the whole debate about the future direction of trade unionism - working class independence or collaboration with the management and government is being contained.

photo: Mark, Oxford

This is a hugely important discussion and Karen’s victimisation raises a very sharp question - how can you work in partnership with people who sack your leaders for speaking out and fighting cuts? Is this a one off - the cases of Yunus Bakhsh and Freemantle and Glasgow carers shows it is not.

Neo liberal marketisation policies are destroying the labour movement’s public service consensus.

All in all it goes to show, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Cut, privatise, killing the NHS.