Comment on this story
comment
LONDON – British newspapers are calling it “the winter of discontent”.
Major strikes are creating chaos at hospitals and gridlock at transit hubs as walkouts increase for firefighters, baggage handlers, paramedics, driving examiners, immigration officers, bus drivers, construction, postmen and railway drivers. The public has been warned to avoid train travel on Christmas Eve.
Most worrying for the government, and for the public, is that the nurses have also just gone on strike. Teachers threaten to stop work at the start of the new school year.
Across the spectrum of public sector workers are openly revolting against the Conservative Party’s 12 years of ‘austerity budgets’ and rising cost of living by 2022. Energy prices are so high here that the government intervened to limit and subsidize home heating. bills so people don’t freeze in their flats.
This follows the immolation of the previous Conservative government, that of Liz Truss, the shortest prime minister in modern British history. She had called for tax cuts but offered no way to pay for them, sending markets tumbling and Truss into early retirement.
The British government is now preparing to mobilize 1,200 army soldiers to drive ambulances during the holidays. If necessary, officials from other agencies will be brought in to check passports at border crossings.
During the worst years of the coronavirus pandemic, millions of ordinary Britons, along with Prime Minister Boris Johnson (also missing), stood on their doorsteps during tough lockdowns to bang pots and pans and applaud National Service workers of Health, greeting them as forwards. – heroes of the line.
Now nurses say they need more than applause. They are exhausted, overworked and underpaid, they say, and want a real raise to keep up with inflation, which has topped 10 percent.
“They’re taking advantage of us,” said Rachel Ambrose, 40, a mental health nurse who works with children and teenagers in Oxford. “We are not looking for an extravagant lifestyle. We are nurses. We just want to pay our bills. We want heat.”
Ambrose said nurses are “angry, we’re angry, we’re determined” and that these strikes “will continue because we’re being ignored.”
He pointed to staff shortages in the NHS that are undermining patient care and have nurses at breaking point. Sick days have soared since the pandemic, and so have nurses leaving the profession or moving abroad.
Britain’s public health system is 50,000 nurses short. Half of new hires today come from overseas because the UK can’t train enough at home or pays too little to attract new workers. Brexit has also slowed the flow of “free movement” of nurses from Eastern Europe to Britain.
The government says the average salary for a nurse is now £35,600 ($43,300). New nurses get paid less; experienced nurses with specialized skills are paid more; overtime also increases wages.
Nurses earn higher wages in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Germany and Spain. British nurses, however, are paid more than their counterparts in France and Italy.
After one of the worst weeks of strikes in recent British history, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s new government is still refusing to sit down with unions, calling pay rises “unattainable” and warning that the government must maintain the wage line to keep inflation under control.
The government supports a modest pay rise for ambulance crews and nurses, as recommended by independent pay review bodies, of 4.75 per cent. The nurses’ union is asking for a 19 percent increase.
Sunak’s spokesman told reporters Monday that “it would be irresponsible to move forward with double-digit payout awards.”
But Sunak and his government ministers are learning that it is one thing to fight the railway workers and their “union bosses”, as the government calls them, and quite another to fight the nurses. Rail strikes create frustrating snoring for city commuters and holidaymakers, highlighted by anti-union tabloids. On the other hand, nurses are revered. A YouGov poll this month found that 64 per cent of Britons supported the nurses’ strike.
On Monday, Sunak called an emergency cabinet meeting to shape plans to maintain the country’s vital national services, with the military on standby.
Around 10,000 ambulance workers in England and Wales will go on strike on Wednesday. Members of the Royal College of Nurses union walked out on Thursday and are heading back to the picket lines on Tuesday.
Nurses who work in emergency rooms have stayed on the job, but hospitals are struggling to maintain staffing for basic care. Many routine procedures, exams, non-urgent surgeries and other treatments have been delayed.
Some heart attack or stroke victims wait almost an hour on average for ambulances, compared to the target of 18 minutes.
In ward practices, where most patients see their GP and nurses, staff describe a system in crisis due to chronic underfunding and staff shortages.
Anthony Johnson, 29, a cardiac nurse in Leeds, is among those backing the Royal College of Nursing’s decision to leave for the first time in its 106-year history.
“We have not had wage increases that meet inflation. That’s why you see nurses going to food banks and the number of vacancies has increased dramatically,” he said. “We have a horrible nurse-to-patient ratio. Our clinical guidelines are one nurse for every eight patients, but we generally never meet that. The reality is that it’s one nurse for 13 patients, so it’s constantly unsafe and it puts the patients at risk”.
He likes working in Britain and will stay. But many are looking abroad, he warned.
“We are training nurses to export, usually to Canada, Australia and New Zealand … where nurses can earn an extra £10,000 [$12,200]” Johnson said. “Instead of investing in our staff, the UK government is stealing nurses from other parts of the world. They’re taking a pay cut and letting this happen.”
Julia Patterson, founder of Every Doctor, a campaign group representing 1,200 UK doctors, said her doctors “support them and will come together to keep patients safe in the absence of nurses. They will have to work incredibly hard, but they support their colleagues to do it.”
He noted that doctors are also being polled to see if they could strike in the new year.
“People are dying because of public health failure,” Patterson said.