The News Line: News
Thursday, 28 June 2007
INDUSTRIAL ACTION CALL AT THE BMA
A CALL for ‘appropriate industrial action to stop the redundancy of its members’ was made to BMA representatives at the BMA’s Annual Representative Meeting (ARM) yesterday.
Proposing Motion 393, from Enfield and Haringey and the London Regional Forum, Mrs A Athow, Enfield and Haringey, applauded the fight put up by RemedyUK, when they mobilised 12,000 junior doctors and their supporters and marched through London.
Athow said that ‘the BMA leadership sold out the juniors.’
She continued: ‘We have to make sure that there are no more sell-outs and that the tide is turned.
‘First we have to recognise the next threat, in time.
‘Second, we have to have a leadership which will lead a fight.
‘The next threat is the mass hospital closure programme.
‘Up to 60 district general hospitals and 100 Accident and Emergency departments are threatened.
‘An average district general hospital employs over 100 consultants and treble that number of SAS (Staff and Associate Specialists) doctors and juniors.
‘It has to be obvious that if we don’t fight, we are going to be made redundant in our thousands.
‘We should organise our membership to defend every single district general hospital.
‘We should link up with local campaigns and other trade unions and take appropriate industrial action.
‘The civil service union PCS and the health union UNISON and the General and Municipal Workers Union have voted in favour of coordinated action across the public sector.
‘We need a different type of leadership, not one which makes excuses after the event and covers up.
‘We need to ring some changes in the BMA September elections and meet up to this challenge.
‘The public is on our side and we need a leadership that takes action to win.’
The motion was opposed by Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the Consultants Committee, who said: ‘It sends the wrong message . . . we don’t want to become the NUM of medicine.’
The motion was lost, with a substantial minority voting for it.
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