Holly Johnston, Nurse and GMB union rep
What is happening to our NHS? Staff have been sounding the alarm on pay for well over a decade, often becoming so burnt out and disillusioned that they walk.
We have 135,000 NHS vacancies, and applications to nursing have fallen by 30%. Newly qualified nurses are coming out with up to £70,000 worth of debt.
The government is refusing to negotiate on pay. People are now starting to see what the Tories’ motive is – a devastating ramp up of privatisation, and charging people for GP appointments and for attending A&E.
Labour’s Keir Starmer and shadow health secretary Wes Streeting offer no solutions, and simply argue for allowing more privatisation.
On the RCN picket lines, nurses speak about how they had PTSD from working during the height of the pandemic, unable to care for their dying patients adequately. They say it’s not much different now. There’s still not enough staff to give safe care.
Staff are striking over pay, but are also making the link between striking and the fight for the NHS as a whole. Decades of deliberate underfunding has led us to this crisis.
In my own area, oncology, we are struggling to staff the teenage cancer unit, and give the patients the specialist services they should have. 12,000 people on cancer treatment lists have been waiting more than three months. The delays of investigations and diagnosis are undoubtedly leading to more deaths and less treatment options.
Staff are unable to meet the demands of their workloads, and many are unable to pay bills. 27% of hospital trusts now have staff food banks. Working agency shifts to attempt to make ends meet is the norm.
Student nurses are qualifying and leaving within months of starting. And there is no workforce plan to replace our experienced colleagues, a third of whom will retire in the next five years.
Underpaid and overworked social care is having a massive impact on the NHS too. There is no care available for people to be discharged home to, so they end up staying in hospital longer than is needed. Much of the social care sector is privatised, non-unionised, and it has 165,000 vacancies.
We must all get behind the strikes by NHS staff. On 6 February, RCN nurses plus ambulance staff in GMB and Unite unions are all striking together – set to be the biggest strike action seen so far in the NHS.
The government has condemned the strikes as unsafe. Yet union members say that the NHS is not safe every day of the year with Tory austerity.
The only solutions to fix the NHS crisis are:
- Immediate inflation-proof pay rises for all health and care staff
- Reinstate student bursaries and scrap tuition fees
- Starmer’s Labour or any pro-privatisation and pro-austerity politicians won’t defend the NHS – we need to fight for the building of a new mass workers’ party
- A socialist NHS and care system – democratically run by elected and accountable committees, including service workers and users
- A socialist planned economy to end oppression, poverty and inequality
