I used to be a Shop Steward in the National Health Service. In 1988 the Thatcher government decided to privatise NHS support services (laundry, cleaning, catering, etc.). They bought off the trade union bureacrats by picking and choosing(with complicity) which services were to be hived-off.
We had a slogan, All-Out Strike-The Only Way To Win! Kind of indicates our response, huh?
Anyway ,
I remember highly charged members meeting at our hospital. Nurses, cleaners, porters, kitchen workers.......all got together to discuss the campaign. A few Laundry workers from another nearby hospital were in attendance. In the middle of the meeting a wee guy called Jimmy entered the meeting and approached the platform, asking where said attendees were as the Laundry workers were locked-out!
The meeting put Jimmy's information to the vote and we immediately held a solidarity sit-in strike!
It was only some days afterwards we found out that, although the Laundry workers were indeed locked-out, this was due to the fact that they had lost the keys to the laundry!
Wee Jimmy became known as Jimmy the Keys!
picture of Che at Gleneagles for the G8, lifted froman anarchist site
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