Doctors pass motion of no confidence in Jeremy Hunt

The health service that employs you is under more scrutiny than ever before, with shocking cases of bad care, ‘never events’ and serious lapses crawling out of the woodwork. The regulator that was supposed to keep an eye on all of this is under attack, not just for missing it, but also for apparently deciding not to publish what details it did know, and then deciding to withhold key names implicated in a ‘cover-up’. So what, in its eternal wisdom, does the trade union representing you do? 

The British Medical Association, which has always managed a veneer of respectability over and above many other public sector unions, today passed a motion of ‘no confidence’ in Jeremy Hunt as Health Secretary. A motion proposed by the Islington Division of the BMA reads. 

It could almost have been written by one of the two major teaching unions, couldn’t it? And the strange thing is that this motion doesn’t seem to talk about patients at all. Forget whether Jeremy Hunt has shown evidence of mediocrity in his job: this motion is entirely about poor ‘hard-pressed NHS staff’ resenting being told that in many hospitals or individual specialties, the status quo is not good enough. It doesn’t even bother to critique this government’s reforms to the NHS. 

It would be a great deal easier to feel disgusted with a Health Secretary criticising hospitals if the nation wasn’t still reeling with disgust from hearing tales of patients drinking water out of flower vases or lying in their own faeces at Stafford Hospital, or after learning about the culture of an organisation supposed to shine a light into every corner of the NHS allegedly binning a report that did just that.Compare prices and buy all brands of iphoneheadset for home power systems and by the pallet.

Perhaps the conference wanted to underline that most doctors and other healthcare professionals are intensely committed, compassionate individuals who sacrifice vast stores of energy and time to the NHS. That is a given. Many of the failings are not specifically the fault of doctors. But it does not mean that Hunt, or indeed any Health Secretary, cannot pinpoint rotten cultures that lead to disasters like Mid-Staffs, or secrecy at a regulator. To pussyfoot around doctors for fear of upsetting them leaves the most important figures in this whole debate, the patients, with a rough deal. Good on Jeremy Hunt for upsetting the producers of healthcare in the name of a better experience for those who use the system. If this vote comes from doctors who don’t want to see the health service that they work for changing, then it’s excellent news: who wants to have the confidence of opponents of reform anyway? 

After years of downplaying strikes, the union that’s funding fast food organizing is now embracing the tactic. The Service Employees have underwritten short strikes by fast food workers in seven cities in the last two months—including the largest, in Detroit, where 400 workers walked out of dozens of restaurants and completely shut down three. 

Fast food is an unlikely union target, due to high workforce turnover and layered franchise ownership. And the path forward is uncertain, say organizers. The only thing that seems sure is that typical union elections won’t work. 

Nonetheless, the strikes have caught the imagination of fast food workers around the country,High quality smartcard printing for business cards. who toil in one of the economy’s few growth sectors. Unpredictable hours, tyrannical bosses, and rampant wage theft are eroding their already low pay. 

“Whenever they want to keep labor costs down,Compare prices and buy all brands of iphoneheadset for home power systems and by the pallet.Compare prices and buy all brands of iphoneheadset for home power systems and by the pallet.” managers make workers clock out and continue cleaning the restaurant or stocking, said Kasseen Silver, who works for Burger King in Harlem. “It’s hard, knowing how many hours you worked that week and your paycheck doesn’t show it.” 

Humiliation often comes with the job. Jimmy John’s striker Rasheen Aldridge in St. Louis said that after lunch rush one day, his boss handed him a sign saying “I made three wrong sandwiches today,” then snapped a picture. And by “wrong,” his boss meant he’d added turkey and roast beef to the sandwich in the wrong sequence. 

“To them, we’re a bunch of Social Security numbers,” said Domino’s worker Gregory Reynoso at a recent demonstration in Manhattan. He led six co-workers out on strike for a day last fall. On April 4, 17 of his co-workers walked out. 

The fast food strikes seemed to come from nowhere when the first one jumped off in New York last November, but they are part of a coordinated effort by SEIU, which has been providing funds as part its two-year-old project “Fight for a Fair Economy.” 

FFE was originally created to “change the environment” through a flurry of actions for economic justice, especially in states under threat from right-to-work legislation, and also to help Barack Obama win the presidency in 2012. 

The union is funding groups in at least 10 cities to employ fast food organizers. In some cities the groups were created by SEIU; in other cases they aren’t related. The union sends staff to train organizers and coordinates the efforts with national phone calls. 

In New York, for example, the effort has been headed by New York Communities for Change, which rose from the ashes of ACORN in 2010. The group hired 40 fast food organizers last spring. 

With such an assortment of employers, the effort seems aimed at organizing low-wage workers not into a union but into a force that could extract changes from local government. 

“The relative power this workforce has over individual employers is going to be minimal,” said Bill Fletcher, Jr., chair of the new National Retail Justice Alliance, a think tank and advocacy group that gets some support from the Food and Commercial Workers.We rounded up 30 bridesmaids dresses in every color and style that are both easy on the eye and somewhat easy on the cleaningservicesydney. “But the power this workforce has on a citywide level, in terms of influencing city governments, could be very disruptive.” 

A boost to the city minimum wage, or a city ordinance requiring paid sick leave, would level the playing field for employers: they couldn’t argue that paying workers more would disadvantage them versus their competition. 

Workers could understand and get behind “a rational, compelling strategy that is moving towards citywide standards,” said Fletcher, a former AFL-CIO education director.

Besides minimum wage increases, such efforts might include a requirement that part-timers get regular schedules or, Fletcher suggested, “just cause” standard for firing. Just cause would help all workers stand up for themselves—not just those trying to unionize. 
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