NHS, Labour and DHL

Various interesting developments today. Firstly the second NHS logistics strike day took place. It coincided with a Health debate at the Labour Party Conference which the leadership lost (apparently the leadership also lost out to the grassroots in a motion on Council Housing in the morning)BBC Report. Though this is good, we cannot expect the Labour leadership to pay any more attention to conference votes than they are accostomed to - i.e. little to none. It is amazing that controversial motions manage to get to the floor of conference after what we have heard about the blocking of motions on the war and Trident replacement!

Meanwhile there are signs that the union busting DHL firm that newlabour have lined up to take over NHS logistics is experiencing another range of difficulties itself, with a ballot of 5000 GMB members for strike action on the plan to sack 3000 permanent staff and replace them with 2500 casual workers. This might affect 102 DHL depots across the country. The potential is there for building links between workers in the public and private sector to fight both cuts and privatisations.