In UNISON? Vote 4 Grassroots Fighter Jordan Rivera #UNISON NEC Elections

To all Unison Health branch secretaries

Dear Branch Secretary,

I am writing to ask you to nominate me in the election for Unison's NEC for the Female Health Seat.  Please can you raise this at your next branch or branch committee meeting. If agreed, it needs to be done at a meeting between Monday 9th January and Friday 10th February 2017 and sent off by 5pm on 10th February.

I attach a nomination form with this letter or they can be obtained at https://www.unison.org.uk/about/our-organisation/lay-structure-democracy-and-elections/

I am an activist in the Health Service. I am part of a health branch that organises to take on the private sector. We recently fought back an attempt by the oursourced company which provides our catering, domestic and portering services to make a third of their workforce redundant. We organised a campaign a very active campaign at our hospital, and they were unable to go through with their plans, with cutbacks being drastically reduced and a reduction from 89 proposed redundancies to only a few voluntary redundancies.

I am always willing to offer solidarity to others resisting the impact of austerity. I work with all unions, users of the health service, MPs, councillors and other campaigners.

We have a government which is relentlessly attacking working class people, whilst giving the rich tax breaks. Our union needs to be better at fighting back. I am standing because I am unhappy with the current leadership of Unison. When branches resist attacks, we need to do more to support them.  We need to coordinate national response rather than leaving each branch to struggle on their own. We cannot be complacent and imagine just having Unison survive by 2020 is enough. Our members are getting poorer whilst working harder or being made redundant, driven out by sickness policies, constant reorganisations and privatisations. Members and branches are tired and overwhelmed. They are also angry.

We need a union leadership that leads. After everything that has happened, our members sometimes lack the confidence to fight. They need to know their union nationally is serious and is 100% behind them. Calling off strikes after one or two days action or not calling anything nationally does not help this.

I welcome the election of Jeremy Corbyn, a principled socialist, as Leader of the labour party. I hope the Labour Party uses this to create real anti-austerity opposition to the Tories and that those MPs who did not support him accept the democratic decision and stop wasting their anger on Corbyn.

The Tories are weak. They have a small majority. They are divided over the EU, and many other things, which will get worse for them as Brexit approaches. They have been forced to back down on some things e.g. immediate cuts to child tax credits, agreeing to take 20,000 Syrian refugees. If we fought we could beat them.

The Tories want to blame migrants for the mess. But it is not migrants who cut our wages, jobs, services and bully us. It's the government, and vicious employers. £22,000 million has been cut from the NHS, this is the root of problems in the NHS, not migrants.  I welcome the 10,000s migrant workers who since its beginning have kept the NHS going.  The NHS would not function without them. The problem is that the Tories do not believe in the NHS.

I will fight for

ü  Solidarity for all those groups the Tories try to scapegoat – migrant workers, refugees, women, LGBT+, disabled, unemployed, users of our services.

ü  Real solidarity with others in struggle e.g. the Durham and Derby Teaching Assistants, Southern rail workers.

ü  Campaigns fighting for the proper budgets needed to sustain our NHS and its staff.

If you would like me to speak at your meetings, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Jordan Rivera jordanjrivera@gmail.com

I would also ask you to consider nominating these who are standing for similar reasons:-

National Black Members seats (all branches can nominate for this)

April Ashley for female black member seat

Hugo Pierre for male black member seat.

Disabled seats (all branches can nominate for this)

Roger Lewis for general disabled seat.

National Community seats (if you are a branch with a community section i.e. most branches)

Janet Bryan (Bolton) for the female community seat.

National Health seats (if you are a health branch)

Neil McAlistair (Manchester Mental health) for general health seat

Roger Hutt (Care UK) for male health seat

Thank you, Jordan Rivera