Watch you're being EMUed!
Socialist Outlook1990sScanned print read by OCR, and not yet proofread: expect run-together words, dropped letters and, where a piece began partway down a page, a few lines of its neighbour. The printed page is the authority.
EVERYONE is being EMUed. That is the message from the excellent pamphlet EMU and the NHS just published by Peoples Europe and written by John Lister and Geoff Martin of London Health Emergency.
The pamphlet, a model of the kind of analysis needed in each sector of the welfare state faced with cutbacks and cash limits, demonstrates in closely argued detail how everything in the NHS - from the length of waiting lists to the pay of NHS staff - is connected to the determination of new Labour to prepare the British economy for entry into the single currency as soon as it is politically possible.
The pamphlet is particularly strong in its analysts of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and how this is connected to the single currency, its convergence criteria and its so-called 'stability pact'. PFI is both a way of keeping public spending down and at the same time undermining the public status of the health service.
This popularly-written pamphlet (illustrated with very good cartoons) is the best material produced yet, for wide use within the unions, which explains the implications of the single currency and its effects on the welfare state.
It is about time unions like UNISON - with a large membership in the NHS and a conference policy against the single currency -took this kind of initiative and Simon Deville AUSTRALIAN trade unionists are engaged in a massive confrontation with the Government, port employers and the National Federation of Farmers.
Earlier this month Patrick, the largest employer in the Australian docks sacked its entire union workforce of 1,400 and attempted to replace them with scab Despite a court injunction ruling picketing of the docks illegal, the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) have responded by blockading the ports.
Patrick attempted to train a scab workforce in Dubai last year, but their plans where scuppered when the MUA threatened to boycott any shipments to and from Dubai.
Chris Corrigan, the company chairman, claimed that Patrick. faced losses of £56 million because of the unions 'refusal to accept change': "The continued industrial thuggery and the union's complete refusal to face economic realities have made today's events inevitable." What