Letters: NHS workers need to unite and fight for a pay rise

Nurses striking in 2024 (Photo: Guy Smallman)

I’m an occupational therapist in the NHS and a Unison union rep.

I spoke at a fringe meeting of the RCN nurses union congress about how different unions can work together to fight for the NHS and win a decent pay rise.

I did this because I think we would win more if we did fight together. We need to throw the cat among the pigeons and start thinking about what action we can take.

Union reps should reach out to each other. In my hospital we often work with doctors in the BMA, but we haven’t really tapped the potential of the RCN.

The RCN is pushing a position that nurses are hard done by. That’s true. Nurses are important and it’s much harder for them to gain promotion and that’s not fair.

But all NHS workers are hard done by.

The RCN has said it will consider pulling out of Agenda for Change. This system looks at your experience and qualifications and works out your pay.

If the nurses leave this, it would be disastrous for us all.

But the RCN is right to do something, all NHS workers should take action on how these nurses are disadvantaged.

This meeting felt like a tentative beginning. We’re beginning to talk about what we can do.

In my hospital, we’re going to start looking at the nurses and the admin workers’ job descriptions. Doing this we can work out what work they’re taking on outside of their official description and fight for them to get regrading or back pay.

The Unison union did this with the phlebotomists in Homerton University Hospital, east London, and won.

But regrading is something to be done in the absence of a national pay win. We need to start fighting together to strengthen our position and confidence. We need to show that we’re not going to be pushed around.

Jordan, London

Confronting Britain First

In Manchester, we have shown that confronting fascists works. On 18 April, anti-fascists united in opposition to Britain First (BF) marching.

The counter-demo, called by Greater Manchester Stand Up To Racism, was the third mobilisation against BF in under a year. Each has been more confrontational and successful than the last.

By the end, the fascists were drunk, demoralised and divided while anti-fascists celebrated.

BF has seen a fracturing in its base and announced that the next march won’t be in Manchester.

Arguments erupted across X between antisemitic neo-Nazis and Zionist “civic nationalists” seeking to cultivate a respectable image. These fault-lines culminated in BF co-leader Ashlea Simon defecting to Restore Britain.

While we reflect on the victory in London on Nakba Day, we can draw on the victory in Manchester as a vision of what we can achieve.

The pressure we exert on them widens the cracks in their movement and it grows the confidence on our side.

If the working class can confront fascists and win, what else can we achieve?

Markus West, Manchester

Who controls AI will control political life

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming the new means of production.

Just as factories defined industrial capitalism, AI is becoming the infrastructure through which labour, communication, education, administration and creativity are organised.

Whoever controls AI will increasingly control economic and political life.

That is why the world’s wealthiest corporations are pouring billions into data centres, algorithms and computational infrastructure. This is not simply about innovation. It is about ownership and power.

AI is built on collective knowledge, language, culture and labour. Yet ownership remains concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite. Workers create the value while corporations capture the profits.

Today a handful of technology corporations dominate communication, commerce and information itself.

AI risks pushing this concentration of power even further.

Christopher Wright, South London

Bankrupt Burnham

After Ed Miliband’s defeat in the 2015 general election there was an inquest into the lack of ideas in the Labour Party. Andy Burnham was among

Labour contenders who had no philosophies and didn’t appealed to young voters.

Now, 11 years on, a cabinet of non-entities makes Burnham look exciting. But he will prove just as bankrupt of ideas as Keir Starmer.

If he becomes prime minister, I predict massive disappointment and the disappearance of Labour as a serious force.

Peter Higginson, Wolverhampton