Manchester Community and Mental Health UNISON

UNISON members voted on Friday (14 Dec) to suspend their indefinite strike of community mental health teams and will return to work on Monday. Their campaign to reinstate Karen Reissmann, and the issues this raises, will now become a national UNISON campaign.

The strike is only suspended not ended. Further strike action by the branch is planned for the New Year as part of this national campaign. The dispute is not over. We are fighting in a different way.

Dave Prentis, UNISON general secretary, who is arranging a meeting with Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Health, has sent a personal message to all the strikers. He says “UNISON will not be silenced and we shall continue to campaign through all available channels to obtain Karen’s reinstatement.”

UNISON is supporting a claim for unfair dismissal at an Employment Tribunal, early day motion by UNISON sponsored MPs and looking to a national lobby of parliament in the New Year.

Crucially trust managers as part of the return to work have agreed that there needs to be an urgent review of Change in Mind. It was issues around the implementation of Changes in Mind which started the serious disagreements with UNISON and we are incredibly pleased that it has been agreed to start a review immediately and deal with the on-going issues which have so worried staff and users alike.

They have also agreed that there will be no victimisation of any striker on return to work. This includes no referrals to the NMC.

Initially the trust managers had insisted that they needed to refer Karen Reissmann to the NMC because she had been sacked. UNISON remained firmly of the belief that this was punitive and unnecessary. There was never any suggestion of concern about her patient care. If she had been referred she would have been unable to work as a nurse even for an agency until the case had been processed which even if quickly dismissed could have taken months.

Strikers told UNISON that they were not prepared to return to work whilst this threat still existed. On Thursday in difficult negotiations into the evening, the threat was withdrawn and management agreed that “as the dismissal for gross misconduct was not related to patient safety a referral to the NMC will not take place”

“I would like to thank all those colleagues who have supported my case. I have been overwhelmed by the support I have received so far. It has helped to keep me strong and well. I know we are all committed to an on-going national campaign to obtain my reinstatement and ongoing campaign against the cuts in our mental health teams. Neither me, nor my colleagues nor our supporters are going away” said Karen.

UNISON has not been beaten but is stronger than ever. We have 7 more stewards. Strikers are feeling good not bad. Thanks partly to the 1000’s of people who have given incredible support over the last 6 months. We have raised almost £200, 000 in hardship and money is still coming in. We have had thousands of messages of support. People really understand and feel that solidarity is still very much alive and very well in UK today. Trust managers have come out of this badly damaged. They have no credibility with anyone in Manchester or the NHS nationally. Hardly anyone who knows about the case (and many, many people do know) support the sacking of Karen or the way they have run this trust.

The user group has said they have no confidence in the trust board and have called for all of them to resign. They have also called for a user-led public inquiry into this trust. UNISON will ballot its members to see if they support the users and if agreed will support the users to set up their own inquiry.