by Keith Richmond
Workers Uniting, which describes itself as “the world’s first global union” and is a partnership between Unite in Britain and United Steelworkers in North America, has launched an investigation into preferred private bidders in the National Health Service.
After the passage of President Barack Obama’s healthcare bill through the United States Senate, the union wants to examine the role of private US-based healthcare providers who are bidding for work in the NHS.
The union, worried by the creeping privatisation of the NHS, has expressed dismay that a number of healthcare providers listed by the Department of Health as suitable to bid for work in the public sector have been actively opposing the public healthcare proposals of the Obama administration.
Gail Cartmail, assistant general secretary of Unite, said: “Just as Workers Uniting is fighting to win healthcare for all in the US, we are also working to prevent the profits-over-people privatisation of the UK health system.
“That is why the global union is launching an investigation of the preferred bidders chosen by the Department of Health to work within the NHS. Union activists from primary care trusts all over the UK are worried about the creeping privatisation of NHS services.”
Carol Landry, international vice president of the USW, said: “In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, the fight boils down to essentially the same thing: winning and protecting fair access to quality health care for all. Millions of workers from around the world believe now is the time to stop putting profits over people and to recognise that healthcare is a human right, no matter where you live.”
Workers Uniting is an international partnership between Unite, the biggest trade union in Britain and Ireland, and USW, the biggest private sector union in the US and Canada. It was set up by Unite joint general secretaries Tony Woodley, Derek Simpson and USW president Leo Gerard to challenge “the growing power of global capital”.
It represents three million workers on both sides of the Atlantic and has been fighting to provide healthcare for all by fixing what it calls “the broken American private insurance based system” – the most expensive in the world – so no American will go without healthcare, or be forced into bankruptcy because of skyrocketing costs. Some 47 million Americans have no coverage despite health insurance company profits of $25 billion.
Now some of those same insurers are trying to make money by providing services to the NHS.
