Today Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust agreed to increase staffing levels on new community mental health teams. Unison union members claimed this as a massive victory, since staff on the teams were due to be cut from tomorrow, Thursday 16 August.
The ballot for strike action to defend leading health union activist Karen Reissmann – who has been suspended from her job as a psychiatric nurse – is tapping into a wider mood of anger at the Manchester mental health trust that employs her.
Leading trade unionists from across Greater Manchester joined scores of health workers at a 300-strong meeting last week in support of Karen Reissmann.
Joan Powell, who sadly died last week, was a well-known socialist activist from Manchester. Joan was born in Denton, Manchester, in 1919 into a family of working class communists.
NHS bosses in Manchester are set to waste thousands of pounds – money that ought to be spent on helping vulnerable people with mental health problems – on a consultant whose "mission" will be to investigate a leading trade unionist currently being disciplined by management.
Thousands of anti-war protesters gathered outside the Labour Party special conference last Sunday as Gordon Brown was anointed the new leader of the party without a contest.
Around 5,000 protestors braved the Manchester rain on Sunday to join the Stop the War demonstration outside the Labour Party special conference that anointed Gordon Brown as the new party leader.
A wave of anger is spreading among trade unionists, health workers and user groups in Manchester following the suspension of longstanding nurse and union activist Karen Reissmann from her job on Friday of last week.
Karen Reissmann, a nurse for 25 years and an elected member of Unison’s national health executive, was suspended from work last Friday, 15 June. That afternoon, an important outpatient appointment with a very vulnerable patient was interrupted and – on the direct orders of the chief executive – she was instructed to leave the out-patient consultation and the hospital.
