Strikes? What’s the point when the Government isn’t even going to sit down and talk? Seriously. What is the point of strikes when you’re going to treat your colleagues like this?
So this morning got sent a video in my emails from someone I know who is NHS staff on the front line in A&E (ER to Americans). I took a screen shot with my phone as it basically just shows this. What you see here are 2 trolleys. The bags are meant to go in those trolleys. And the bags contain soiled bed sheets and ward clothing (the stuff they put on you if your own clothes are damaged or covered in blood).
She said another staff member, a nurse, walks in as she’s using the disposal area, throws a bag (splitting it) on the floor and begins walking out. “Put it in the trolley!” says my friend.
“NOT MY JOB!!” nurse storms off.
Later she said she’s in there, and took that video due to the floor being covered. The man comes in to collect, looks down at it with sheer disappointment, and starts having to lift the bags into the empty trolley you see behind. He tells her “this is every room now, and I service 20 rooms.”
10 bags on the floor there. 20 rooms. His back is in pain. He’s got a job interview. He’s definitely leaving now. Would have taken the nurse half a second to put the bag in the right place. I guarantee this nurse and others like them will have been out on strike about conditions. These are people I call middle-class-strikers. Out of touch with those in the working classes, ultimately causing problems for them when they act like this. Yeah its not great being a nurse now - but don’t do this to others. You’ll lose their support when you do.
Getting run ragged until tempers are frayed and everyone is snapping at each other is caused precisely by the conditions they’re striking against. And while these nurses may be prepared to strike, they may not have the class consciousness that would lead them to show solidarity with their fellow workers and help them out in ways like this.
The ones at fault are still the government, and frankly conditions are only going to get worse and worse until the NHS has been fully dismantled by privatization, regardless of how well the nurses and support workers treat each other. A fully functioning health system is a thing of the past, irretrievably, until after a successful socialist revolution.
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You can in fact blame the government, at least a little, because the government are the controllers of the state and the state is a machine used to wage class war - a vital component of which is stifling class consciousness. And the English proletariat has been one of the most enslaved and unconscious working classes in the world, since at least Marx and Engels’ time. You’re right that it’s down to us to talk to others, because we as communists understand the world better and so understand why we should have solidarity with other workers. The class-unconscious people out there don’t have the benefit of this understanding, so they may treat their fellow workers badly - but if we write them off as irredeemable because they’re not already perfect, then how could we ever hope to succeed? What would be the point of trying to reach them?
