ESNEFT Picket Line. Photo: Lucy Nichols
Join the march to support striking NHS workers in Essex and Suffolk this Saturday and to demand an end to NHS privatisation
The 200 plus ancillary or ‘soft-service’ workers employed by Colchester and Ipswich hospitals (and outlying annexes) are not giving up their fight to keep their jobs in the NHS.
The strikers, members of Unison, have called for a march on Saturday 19 October from Colchester hospital to the town centre and are asking for strikers, supporters, ex-patients, trades unionists and their families to support it.
As one of the strikers’ reps put it:
‘The NHS doesn’t belong to any Foundation. It belongs to us – the patients who use it and the people who work in it. Selling bits off to private contractors means cost-cutting, which means a worse service for the patients. This strike is for all of our benefit. Please come on Saturday and tell the Trust “Hands Off our NHS”.’
The march will assemble outside the Colchester Hospital entrance on Turners Road at 10am and move off at 10:30 and march to Castle Park.
The Unite trade-union branch at Barts Hospital in London, which won its battle to bring services back in house, has pledged its support and hopes to send a delegation on the march. Likewise, the University of Essex lecturers’ UCU union branch, and the Essex and Suffolk lorry drivers branch of Unite have pledged their support.
Counterfire is urging all of our readers who can make it to support this march, and to raise it in your workplaces and union branches.
Before you go
The ongoing genocide in Gaza, Starmer’s austerity and the danger of a resurgent far right demonstrate the urgent need for socialist organisation and ideas. Counterfire has been central to the Palestine revolt and we are committed to building mass, united movements of resistance. Become a member today and join the fightback.
Richard Allday
Richard Allday is a member of Unite the Union’s National Executive, a branch secretary and shop steward in road haulage. A member of Counterfire, his comrades know him better as 'the angry trucker'.