...in the NEW WORKER
LEADERS of 180,000 low-paid hospital workers last Wednesday lodged a ten-point pay claim, seeking a flat £20 a week pay increase.
This would put the poorest paid on the same rate as their local government counterparts.
Current pay scales range from £101.38 a week (£2.60 an hour) to £131.35 a week (£3.37 an hour).
Groups covered by the claim include hospital cleaning staff, porters and gardeners telephonists and laundry workers.
Other key points of the claim include a review of the job evaluation system to establish a new evaluation system based on equal pay for work of equal value and increases in annual leave.
Union chief negotiator Roger Poole said: “vastly improved pay, conditions and opportunities for hospital workers are a perquisite for a more responsive service to patients”.
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IRAQ continues to stand firm in the face of the US Air Force, which has been bombing Iraq night and day since they launched their attack on the 17th January.
Iraq air-defences are continuing to take their toll, though the US government only admits to losing 25 warplanes as we go to press.
The early confidence of the American hawks has gone, with predictions now of a long war one in which Washington’s top regional pawns, Saudi Arabia and Israel, have not escaped unscathed.
Iraqi missiles continue to get past the US defences hitting targets in Saudi capital of Riyadh and causing devastation in Israel.
In Tel Aviv the authorities admit that Iraqi missiles have destroyed over 6,000 apartments and put their casualties at over 200 including 4 deaths.
In the United States, already worried that Morocco may pull out of the American war-coalition, told the Israelis to take no unilateral action that may provoke greater anti-American feeling in Syria and Egypt, whose regimes support Bush.
