Closed Shop and Nurses
Sooner or later a dictatorial announcement on the closed-shop issue was bound to lead an employer into acute embarrassment. This embarrassment the Willesden Council has brought on itself this week. At a meeting on Monday evening (attended by two nurses as reporters) it decided that all its employees who had not joined a trade union by next pay-day should be given notice. Of the fifty-two nurses at the Willesden Municipal Hospital only eight belong to a union ; and at a meeting on Tuesday the nurses decided to resist the Coun- cil's ultimatum. They would not join a union, and even if they were dismissed they would remain with their patients until they were turned out. They are in a strong position, since not only are workers in their profession seriously short, so that they could find fresh work immediately, but the Council could not replace them, and they are performing an essential service which cannot be discontinued for even a day. It seems that some employers—possibly mainly public- authority employers—have not yet learnt the lesson pressed home during the war with its shortage of labour : you cannot dictate to your employees when you cannot replace them. The Willesden Council seems in the end to have recognised that, for it has decided that membership of the Royal College of Nursing (which is very far from regarding itself as a trade union) will satisfy requirements. This kind of move by a local authority is one of the first fruits of the recent Trade Disputes Act, and it is very rotten fruit.
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