Dear MNA,
Nottingham Socialist Party has heard about the strike at St Vincent’s through the Independent Socialist Group and have seen the powerful video at End Understaffing at St. Vincent’s Hospital!
We want to express our complete solidarity with your struggle.
The health, welfare and dignity of patients should be paramount; that requires management to ensure it treats staff with respect, providing safe staffing levels, decent wages and it should go without saying sufficient equipment and supplies.
We note that the negotiations over staffing commenced well before the pandemic and that Tenet Healthcare has taken a hard line. This is truly a disgrace, even more so during the pandemic.
For Tenet Healthcare to receive over $1 billion in stimulus funds and to post profits of $400 million and yet to still refuse to deliver what is needed, shows their profit driven priorities.
Living in the UK, “for profit healthcare” is not the norm although it is a growing part of our healthcare system although privately run and for profit hospitals are a small minority of the private sector involvement.
The National Health Service (NHS) is the greatest reform won by working people in the UK yet we still have to struggle against creeping privatisation, government cronyism, management looking to reorganise at the expense of services and staff and years of austerity leading to significant drops in NHS staff living standards (and elsewhere).
When I worked for my union branch (local) I was involved in a successful campaign to save service user lives and staff jobs, terms and pay levels in a short sighted reorganisation which the clinical staff overwhelmingly saw was a disaster with service users with Learning Disabilities and suffering from dysphagia at great risk.
The National Health Service (NHS) is the greatest reform won by working people in the UK and we stand for kicking out the profiteers from our NHS and we would hope to see the introduction of healthcare in the US that is truly free at the point of use, publicly funded, publicly managed and publicly accountable.
We shall be forwarding details of your struggle to our local Trades Union Council.
Solidarity Greetings,
Gary Freeman
On behalf of Nottingham Socialist Party
@NottinghamSP
Independent Socialist Group 