health and medicine
News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles in hospitals and pharmaceuticals around the world.
Office Workers on Strike: San Francisco 1981
A short account of an ongoing strike of Blue Shield clerical workers in San Francisco in 1981, by Lucius Cabins.
Since December 8, 1980, 1,100 office workers at Blue Shield Insurance Company have been on strike. They are represented by the Office and Professional Employees International--Local #3 (OPEIU), AFL-CIO.
Hospital workers fight over pay in Poland, 2007
Wildcat's account and critical evaluation of a mass protest camp of thousands of nurses, and strike by doctors, in Poland fighting for a pay increase.
The nurses' tent village
Flu vaccine workers strike
Workers have launched all-out strikes at two sites owned by Sanofi Pasteur in support of a demand for higher wages.
Workers at the sites in Val de Reuil and Marcy began action on December 15, they are demanding an improved contract from management. The pay offer of 1.2% has been dismissed and workers are demanding a 3% rise with a minimum increase of 150 euros a month.
Wave of strikes sweeps Greece
A wave of strikes culminating on Thursdays pan-worker mobilisation has been the response to the scaremongering of the government amidst the worsening economic crisis that threatens Greece with bankruptcy.
After the week of riots came the week of strikes: the multifold strikes that are taking place since Tuesday 15 December and peaked on Thursday 17 with the pan-workers strike called by PAME, the Communist Party Union Front, as wells a dozens of extra-parliamentary parties of the left and first-grade unions forming demos in 58 cities and towns around Greece.
Medicine and the Spanish Civil War
A historical survey of medicine in Spain during the Spanish Civil War
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 2002 March; 95(3): 147–150.
The Royal Society of Medicine
by Nicholas Coni, FRCP
When hospital is a prison
Ben Goldacre on the use of psychiatry as a form of social control, and the politically-motivated diagnosis of mental illness. Feb 2003.
When I hear the phrase “political psychiatric diagnosis”, I start thinking about Soviet dissidents, dosed up on thioridazine, being physically restrained on lock-up wards. I like to think I would have had nothing to do with that kind of business, because I went into psychiatry to help people, not to be a jailer.
Low-level organising in a hospital
A hospital worker named Malcolm's account of collective organisation and counter-information in the workplace.
One day the three hospital workers I lived with showed me a memo the hospital put out announcing a picnic for the staff. It said you had to bring your own food. The administration thought they were doing all the workers a great favor sending them this invitation to a bring-your-own-food picnic.
On the US row over private versus "socialised" healthcare
The Anarchist Federation analyses the ongoing debate in the United States over controversial plans for health care reform.
The noisy, controversial and increasingly confrontational ‘debate’ in the USA over the Obama administration’s proposed healthcare reforms has received a good deal of attention in the UK, especially after a series of speeches, articles, email circulars and TV ads began making outlandish claims about both the contents of the proposals and the UK NHS, which is supposedly about to be emulated in the
Resistance to hospital closures grows - European Counter Network
Report on several November 1992 demonstrations and a ward occupation by nurses, against proposed hospital closures.
A government sponsored report on the health service in London has recommended the closure of at least four major hospitals and ten or more smaller units. If the Tomlinson report is implemented, 2500 hospital beds will be lost immediately, and 20,000 hospital workers may lose their jobs.
The ambulance dispute, 1989 - The Red Menace
Article attempting to link up the 1989-1990 London ambulance workers' dispute with that of council, construction and hospital workers.
Now the police won't just put you in hospital, they'll drive you there too
