Full funding, fair pay, end privatisation

Gareth Bromhall, ambulance service worker and Swansea trades council secretary

Some of the lowest-paid NHS workers in Wales have voted overwhelmingly for strike action this month.

Band 2 healthcare support workers at Swansea Bay University Health Board, represented by Unison, are to take two days of strike action on 10-11 December after a 99% yes vote – eight hospitals will be affected across Swansea and Neath Port Talbot.

The dispute centres around pay. Unison has said that although the NHS handbook states that healthcare support workers at Band 2 should only perform basic personal care, the staff involved are regularly inserting cannulas, monitoring blood and performing electrocardiograms.

They are fighting for the pay that reflects this work.

This strike – which involves staff whose pay had to be topped up during the recent pay negotiations to prevent it dropping below the minimum wage – is significant.

It takes place under a double layer of Labour Party administration, with health devolved to the Senedd (Welsh parliament) in Cardiff Bay and the Welsh health secretary talking of “tough decisions”, and Labour in power in Westminster.

The strikers in Wales will join others who have taken action in the NHS over the last few months – including over 350 workers in North Essex striking against the outsourcing of their jobs.

Both disputes represent the twin crises of low pay and privatisation that are at the heart of the ongoing situation in the NHS.

While at the time of printing it’s not ruled out that Wes Streeting, Keir Starmer and Welsh Secretary Jeremy Miles intervene to save face for the Labour government, it’s likely that pickets will once again be seen outside our hospitals, following those by nurses, junior doctors and ambulance staff over the past few years.

NHS workers need a pay rise to make up the 30% that NHS staff have lost in real terms in the past 15 years – that ensures a liveable wage for all staff. We need an end to privatisation and the renationalisation and insourcing of all services and staff, and full funding for health and social care. Under Labour, as under the Tories, we have to fight back to save our NHS and to make it fit for purpose.