Jon Dale, Unite Notts Health branch secretary
Intensive care nurses at Bassetlaw Hospital have gone on strike. Their employer, Doncaster and Bassetlaw NHS Trust, is trying to use ‘fire and rehire’ to force through changes to their contracts.
That could end with the eventual closure of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in Worksop, North Nottinghamshire.
Trust management wants to force the nurses to regularly rotate to Doncaster for eight-week periods. They claim this is to keep nurses fully skilled in their highly specialised roles. Picketing nurses told the ‘Socialist’ this was not the case and have presented alternative plans which keep their skills up to date.
Unite’s regional officer, Chris Rawlinson, said: “The Trust’s rejection of this exposes what really lies behind its plans – the decommissioning by stealth of Bassetlaw’s ICU.”
Not only would this mean a half-hour ambulance journey for patients, but their families could face an hour and a half journey on public transport. Nurses and families often know each other in their local community, reassuring at such an anxious time.
Travel would be even worse for the nurses on 13-hour shifts. Some live just a few minutes from Bassetlaw Hospital and could not get to Doncaster on public transport at shift-change times. Management countered that they could start later and miss the crucial patient handover between shifts. That risks patient care.
The long journey also risks nurses’ safety. Leaving the Doncaster site after 13 hours working through the night last winter, a picket told us how she’d fallen asleep at the wheel, waking as she clipped the kerb. Luckily, that time no damage was done.
The 29 nurses are angry. On a 96% turnout, 100% voted to strike – the first strike most have ever been on.
After two days on the picket line, the nurses are working to rule, with the prospect of further strikes if management doesn’t back down. “They didn’t think we’d come out, but now they know we’re serious,” said pickets.
Eighteen months into this Labour government, workers still face ‘fire and rehire’ by employers in the NHS trying to make inadequate funding cover increasing needs. Unite and all trade unions need political representatives fighting to end this.
