health and medicine
News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles in hospitals and pharmaceuticals around the world.
Chilean general strike ends after wage increase
Chile's Senate unanimously approved a 10% wage increase for public workers on Thursday, ending a strike by 400,000 state employees that had halted garbage collection, and affected health and school services.
After the unanimous 32-0 vote in the Senate, union leaders announced the end of the four day-strike.
The Senate vote came hours after Chile's lower house rejected a 9.5% wage increase. Following the lower house loss, the government had increased its wage hike offer to 10% and senators approved the sweetened deal.
Unite NHS workers vote for strike action
Thousands of NHS workers, including mental health nurses, paramedics and ambulance staff, have voted to strike in protest at a derisory pay deal.
Unite, which balloted 77, 000 workers, said there was a 3-1 vote in favour of industrial action, with just over half backing walkouts. The union said industrial action would start before Christmas although officials would not decide until later this week what form the action will take.
NHS workers balloting for industrial action
Thousands of members of the Unite union working in the National Health Service are being asked if they will take action, including strike action over a three-year below inflation pay offer.
After the ballot closes on 12 November, Unite will have a 28-day 'window' to take action that its members have voted for.
Protests in Belfast in support of women's right to choose
The Alliance for Choice in Northern Ireland is heading up a campaign for the extension of the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland. On Wednesday 22nd there will be a vote on an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in Westminster to extend the Act to NI - 41 years after its introduction in the rest of the UK.
Organise!, political activists, and pro-choice campaigners will be staging a series or protests in the next week in the run up to the Westminster vote on the extension of the 1967 Abortion Act to NI.
Foundation trusts: a guide for NHS workers
An examination of NHS reforms, what they mean and how health workers can resist them.
We all know that the NHS is undergoing a period of 'reform', but what is actually happening? And what does this mean for those of us who work within the NHS?
NHS Notional Health Service - The great health and social care swindle
An in-depth look at NHS, the state it is in and what we can do about it.
Most of us at some point in our lives will use Health and Social care services, be they NHS, Local Authority, or private sector. Many of us also will be only too aware of the major funding crisis that exists, threatening many of the basic services we have taken for granted in the past.
The medicalisation of everyday life
NHS doctor and science writer Ben Goldacre writes about bullshit medical research, bogus science reporting, the placebo effect, and everything else from postmodernism to evolutionary psychology.
[b]His critiques of the health system, pharmaceutical industry, and consumer health fads are extremely relevant - his focus on social factors, economic inequalities, and rejection of reductionist medicalising and/or individualising of what are essentially social/collective issues is pretty consistent with any critique class-struggle anarchists could produce.
Psychiatrists raise concern over torture involvement
The US military is violating international and professional agreements forbidding doctors to partake in any sort of interrogation.
Contrary to stated positions of various medical and psychiatric profession associations, the US military is training psychiatrists to be involved in military interrogations.
NHS Unite members reject pay offer
Members of Unite, the UK's largest trade union and third largest in the NHS, have overwhelmingly voted to reject the government's 7.99% three-year pay deal and have voted for a ballot on industrial action.
Not long after the rejection of a pay deal by NHS workers in the GMB, 94.8% of Unite's health sector workers - including health visitors, hospital pharmacists, health care chaplains and members in many other health care professions and support services voted to turn down the three year offer worth less than 8%.
NHS strike looms as GMB reject pay deal
A threat of industrial action across the NHS intensified yesterday when health workers in the GMB union voted by an overwhelming majority to reject the three-year pay deal offered by the government.
If their decision is confirmed by the 450,000 NHS workers in Unison next week, the government may be forced to abandon its attempt to reach a long-term settlement.
