2
July
2013
GMB Trade Union to Mobilise with other Unions for Rally to Save the NHS at Tory Party Conference in Manchester on Sunday 29th September.
There is simply no place in our health service for business to profit from the misfortunes of others and this message will ring around Manchester on 29 September say Trade Unions. GMB and other Trade Unions representing millions of working people and their families will mobilise for a protest against the accelerating sell-off of the NHS to profit-driven private healthcare companies at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester on Sunday 29 September.
The three biggest unions in the country - Unite, Unison and the GMB Trade Union - announced on June 20th that they will be at the forefront of community protests to highlight the public's increasing concern at the piecemeal dismantlement of the NHS for the benefit of companies, such as Virgin Care and US private health providers.
As Tory MPs and delegates gather in Manchester, the unions will rally the public to reinforce the message that private healthcare companies will be helping bankroll the party's conference.
The move comes as the wealthy G8 governments at Enniskillen discussed how to further deregulate public services, so pushing the NHS further into private hands and imperiling its universal, free at the point of use service.
The trade unions will be calling for the immediate halt to the privatisation of the health service which is enshrined in the coalition's Health and Social Care Act - and a cessation to the handing out of contracts to companies that put shareholder profit before patient care. The unions point out the predatory interest in lucrative NHS contracts of the giant Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), co-owned by the assets management firm Bain whose profits helped fund the right-wing Republican presidential bid of Mitt Romney last year.
As fears mount that government 'reforms' could see NHS disappear in its present universal form by 2015, unions in Manchester will reflect public opinion in demanding a halt to the sell-off process.
