A well attended mass meeting of the Dudley Hospital strikers voted unanimously today (Fri) to end their strike on May 22nd. The first NHS jobs transfer to the private sector June 1st under the Private Finance Initiative scheme for a new, smaller hospital, which will now cost £137m, compared with an initial projection of £65m.

Usually mass meetings that call off strikes are a downer. But the only people who looked down at the end of the meeting were UNISON bureaucrats, who pulled off their first mass mobilisation of the dispute to see the strike being ended.

The top table at the meeting looked like a wall of sharp suits of UNISON full-timers including General Secretary Dave Prentice. They were obviously not expecting the roasting they got from the strikers.

Under pressure of the strikers anger at the lack of support they had from UNISON leadership; at Labour's eagerness to privatise everything that moves; and at UNISON's continuing funding of Labour, Prentice claimed the union has withheld £250,000 of the planned donation to Labour.

There was anger and determination to continue resistance after PFI - and within Dudley to stop any attempts at victimisation and to defend current working conditions. The fight nationally will be to further the campaign for co-ordinated industrial action to kill PFI, and to reverse it where it has already been forced through.