Nurses and ambulance workers have continued their historic strike action with nurses walking out on 18-19 January across England and Wales, joined in Wales by ambulance strikers on 19 January and in England and Wales on 23 January. The nurses in the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and ambulance workers in Unite, Unison and GMB unions are all fighting for above-inflation pay rises.
Socialist Party members have joined picket lines and protests.
In London 2,000 nurses came together on 18 January from their picket lines to march from University College Hospital through the city. As Ian Pattison reports, the support for them was phenomenal. The sound of car horns, buses and fire engines beeping in support was deafening. And support for the Socialist Party’s call for everyone to strike together in a 24-hour general strike was unbelievably popular – from nurses, the public, and from patients!
Josie Shelley in Stafford reports that, despite the cold and the snow, over 80 members of the RCN were out on a very lively and determined picket line at St George’s Hospital. Contrary to what some media outlets would have us believe, there was overwhelming support from motorists as they drove past. The nurses are calling for safer staffing levels and fair pay. St George’s is a psychiatric hospital and it has seen many cuts to its beds and services over the years, along with other psychiatric hospitals in the area.
An RCN Derbyshire Healthcare Trust picket in Chesterfield told Jon Dale: “I started my first job as a qualified mental health nurse seven months ago and I’m already exhausted. We work two 14-hour shifts and a seven-hour shift every week. As newly qualified nurses, we’re on a ‘preceptorship’ and supposed to be learning from more experienced nurses. But often there are just two of us new nurses running a ward of 30 patients. There’s no time to learn and many who started with me have left. It’s not so bad if there are healthcare assistants as they’re often very experienced, but then they get taken off to other wards that are even more short-staffed.”
Another said: “My friend took her 90-year old mother to King’s Mill A&E (in Mansfield) and they’d run out of clean linen and pillows. She went to fetch a picnic blanket and a cushion from her car for her mother to lie on.” And another added: “There’s so many unfilled vacancies and no one applying for them. I remember when the miners came out on strike to support the nurses [in 1982]. We should all stick together.”
On the second day of the nurses’ strike, 1,000 workers in the Welsh Ambulance Service in Unite took strike action. Across Wales there were lively picket lines. Socialist Party Wales members reported that at every picket line workers were at pains to explain they did not want to strike, but had little option. Low pay has demoralised workers and year after year nothing has been done. Even though the staff have received a real-terms pay cut for the last seven years, the action is not just about pay but the underfunding of the NHS which has angered workers, as paramedics are forced to wait at overstretched hospitals for hours. A paramedic in Cwmbran said: “One woman suffering from cancer was left lying on the floor for 12 hours last week after collapsing before I arrived at her home! How do you think that makes us feel? Something has to be done”.
Unite paramedics on the Port Talbot picket line told us how angry and frustrated they felt over the scandalous way their profession is being treated by the Tories in Westminster and the Labour-led Welsh government in the Senedd who have devolved responsibility for the NHS.
“Like everyone else who is being forced to take action, our strike is of course partly about pay. But the continuing, long-term rundown of the NHS is definitely our primary fight. We are being stopped from using our professional skills because we are stuck outside A&E departments waiting to hand over patients for hours on end.
“On far too many occasions we can spend our entire 12-hour shift outside A&E. No good for us, no good for onboard patients, and definitely no good for those waiting in agony for an ambulance to arrive. All our training, all our skills, are being wasted and patients inevitably end up suffering and worse! Like our other health colleagues we are determined to defend our NHS and have the full support of the public.”
Similarly in Cardiff. Rep Ian said: “People are quite rightly attacking the Tories over the state of the NHS but we’ve got Labour running it in Wales and it’s no better.” Dominic, a Unite member, said: “Pay is one issue but it’s not the whole story. We’re all frustrated because we’re not meeting the needs of the community. It feels like I’m on strike every shift. I’ll spend hours waiting outside the hospital with patients that can’t be handed over because of staff shortages. NHS workers need a pay rise so we can recruit and retain the staff we need.”
At every picket line there was no time for the Welsh government who have stood by while the Welsh NHS is being run into the ground. Comments by Welsh health minister, Eluned Morgan, that people should live healthier lives to avoid needing hospital care were met with derision by paramedics who are on the from line of dealing with very sick patients.
There was a general desire for ambulance workers in all unions to strike together on the same day and to strike together with other public service workers.
At Birkenhead ambulance centre, members from GMB and Unison were all determined and in good spirits, reports Steve Ion. Support from the public was huge, with plenty of car horns and general support from the public and other unions. Concerns were raised that patients have been placed in corridors on arrival for a long time now, not just recently.
The current pay talks and government offers on pay were seen as totally inadequate as members have been suffering from 2% pay increases for years already. The trade union leaderships can make a massive difference now with the Tories in disarray. The determination and sacrifice of ambulance workers and other NHS staff, and all other workers fighting for decent terms and conditions, must be built on. Striking together with other workers on a day of further coordinated action would be a big show of strength. Union leaders, including the tops of the TUC, must take steps now to prepare for it.
- Ambulance workers and nurses are striking together on 6 February and both have further dates planned later in February. Midwife and maternity support worker members of the Royal College of Midwives working in the NHS in Wales will strike on 7 February
