As an NHS worker I have seen the impact of austerity on the health system over the years, but now we are at crunch point. An NHS Trust in Sheffield is expected to cut £65 million under the guise of ‘savings’ this year. It is expected that next year will bring additional tens-of-millions in cuts with the addition of whatever is unachieved from this year’s ‘target’.
How are they currently making these cuts? So far, largely in staffing reductions – whether resignations, ‘mutually agreed redundancies’, or the current favourite of not backfilling for staff that leave. Many departments have been on months-long hiring freezes which means that if a colleague leaves they cannot be replaced. As you would expect, the staff are expected to keep treatment levels and targets unaffected. This ultimately results in NHS Proffessionals (bank) staff being used to fill the holes – more expensive than just having enough staff to begin with.
Additional bureaucracy has been brought in to ‘review’ whether we really need to replace colleagues that leave, and this panel nearly always rejects the first attempt, if not all of them. Another new bureaucratic panel has been brought in to assess if departments are on course for their cuts, and will bring in financial managers to take over the budget if they do not think they are on the right track.
These additional layers of management bureaucracy take supervisors and line managers away from helping with the already short-staffed wards and departments to focus on further paperwork. Funding for ‘unessential’ training has been pulled. We have been told on numerous occasions by directorate managers and the CEO that we are not striving for excellence, we are striving for ‘good enough’ now. A damning reflection of the fall in standards at the hands of cuts and austerity. These decisions are directly causing the dropping of patient standards all together.
As morale on the ground drops to the lowest I’ve seen it – definitely lower than during the Covid-19 pandemic and previous austerity measures – we need to be clear. NHS workers must unionise and organise to save the NHS.
We must demand a coordinated fightback against austerity by all unions representing healthcare staff, but especially the top five: Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Unison, Unite, British Medical Association (BMA) and GMB, alongside specialised unions such as Royal College of Midwives (RCM) and the Society of Radiographers (SoR). Whichever union is the most applicable, join it, get active, and relentlessly push for coordinated action!
In order to stop the decline impacting patient treatment further, and in order to save the NHS from further privatisation, we must coordinate a fightback across the unions to fight against the government’s austerity. Our working conditions directly impact patient outcomes, and neither can be compromised!
An NHS worker in Yorkshire
