After years of passive acceptance of low pay and bad conditions hospital ancillary workers are getting up and fighting. Strikes, go-slows, overtime bans, and rank and file organisations, familiar forms of struggle in most other sectors of industry, have been virtually unknown in the hospitals until this year. But this new-found militancy can only be successful if the reasons for the previous weakness of hospital workers and the precise forms of government and management attacks are understood.
NECESSARY EVILS Why are most hospital workers and especially ancillary staff so badly paid? For the ruling class the National Health Service (set up in 1948) was a necessary repaired when they go wrong and are not easily replaceable in conditions of full employment; evil because it cannot be run at a profit. So the N.H.S. has provided a minimal service as cheaply as possible and financed mainly by the working class through income tax, National Insurance contributions, and charges. Since the N.H.S. is a labour-intensive "industry", employing 800,000 Workers, low pay for the majority of them is an essential part of running it on the cheap.
However this could not be done without the acquiescence of the workers themselves. This is achieved in a number of ways. The general hangeover of the idcological traditions of hospitals from the time when they were charitable (To none 8)