HEALTH & TRANSPORT:

FIGHT THE CUTBACKS

People in Northern Ireland are being hit hard by the recession with job losses, home repossessions and high prices.

People in Northern Ireland are being hit hard by the recession with job losses, home repossessions and high prices. We are also seeing cutbacks in services happening across the board.  Take for example the Health Minister Michael Mc Gimpsey (pictured right) and his proposals to axe 700 nurses from their posts in Northern Ireland.

Under these proposals in the next 2 years there will be cutbacks amounting to £340 million, 2500 health and social care posts will be lost in the North.  This is the last thing that workers need in a time of recession. Such drastic cutbacks would have a disastrous effect and place hundreds onto an already rising dole queue. But also the health service would be seriously damaged by such huge proposals. Mc Gimpsey’s plans to cutback and attack public services should be thrown into the dustbin.

There are also proposals for cutbacks within transport. Bus company Wrightbus- who just recently signed a £11 million partnership deal with a Dutch coachbuilder has stated that it is to slash 235 jobs in Ballymena.

These cutbacks and job losses come on the top off closures of Woolworths and Zavvi amongst other stores. The recession is already affecting people, these cutbacks and job losses will make peoples’ lives much more difficult in the period ahead.

The fact that we are in the worst economic crises since the 1930’s is not the fault of workers in Northern Ireland but of the bankers and the crazy logic of the capitalist system. Therefore we should demand that working people don’t pay for the recession whilst billions of taxpayer’s money get handed to bailout the bankers.

The Assembly has previously stated that they would fight calls from Westminster to cut funding to the Northern Ireland executive, yet it is precisely the Assembly that is proposing cutbacks in relation to health and a whole range of other areas. Stormont must protect people’s jobs and ensure that services aren’t cut in this period of economic recession. Whilst different parties in the Assembly sometimes speak out against individual proposed cutbacks they all bear responsibility for them. It was all the main parties in Stormont   who actually agreed to the cutbacks in the assembly budget. Such meager attempts of protest are merely done to strengthen their own standing.

A fantastic example of how people can resist job losses and redundancies is that of the workers in the Waterford Crystal plant.

Threatened with redundancy and a pension removal workers in Waterford crystal occupied their plant. The only reason why they have a real possibility of saving their jobs is because they took action, occupied and fought back. Unless workers across the north take action and fight against cuts in services and job losses then it will be they who are forced to pay for the recession .We must ensure that it doesn’t happen.