Vote Len Hockey

SOCIALIST PARTY member Len Hockey is standing in the election for the health service group executive (SGE) of UNISON.

Len is a hospital porter working at Whipps Cross Hospital in east London. He is joint branch secretary of the UNISON branch.

He works for Initial Hospital Services (IHS). And in 2003 he led a successful campaign which saw the unionisation of privatised, low-paid mainly migrant workers who were brought in to work for IHS after the services were privatised.

Alongside his fellow union activists, Len's campaign was successful, after strike action during the summer of 2003, in delivering pay and conditions improvements. It also won an agreement to end the inequality of treatment of workers doing the same jobs, providing for the same pay and conditions as those employed directly by the NHS.

Len is standing for election in support of the urgent need for the development of a united national campaign aimed at the ending of the privatisation and marketisation of the NHS.

Len says:

"To blame the deficits on pay is an insult. Some top consultants might have been given more under the Agenda for Change but many of our low-paid members came off worse under the scheme.

"The government seem intent on driving through their programme of privatisation and market "reforms". But despite these attacks, our union still gives millions every year to the Labour Party.

"We should break the link with the Labour Party. Stop spending our members' money on the party that attacks us. It is time for UNISON to link up with other unions and build a new mass workers' party.

"That is why I support the Campaign for a New Workers' Party which has been set up to do exactly that."

Why not click here to join the Socialist Party, or click here to donate to the Socialist Party.

In The Socialist 13 April 2006:

Socialist Party campaigns

Don't let Blair wreck the NHS