25,000 NHS staff in the Unite, Unison and NIPSA unions were out on united pickets at hospitals today.
This is the largest day of strike action in years and staff were motivated and and had the government clearly in their sites with no time for the Tory and DUP line. They wanted to save the NHS and the public was loud, clear and constant in their support at Ulster Hospital in a mile up the road from Stormont.
LACK OF DIGNITY AND SERVICE FOR PATIENTS
Rona Hendry a NIPSA rep at Ulster Hospital and a community mental health team worker was shaking with anger as she told the story of a neglected elderly man she found on her rounds in complete distress.
‘I called an ambulance immediately. It came but he never got into the hospital. He spent the entire night in the ambulance waiting for a place in the hospital here behind us: No room. No dignity. No service.’
He made it through the night because people stayed on over time inevitably putting family out after an extremely long and very cold night.
She highlighted the exploitation of social and care workers who are using their personal vehicles, personal time and own petrol money to keep the NHS running.
‘NIPSA members are striking again today for Safe staffing, Mileage, and Pay Retention’
RETENTION AND RECRUITMENT
Day centre staff from Bangor were here too. They can’t provide the care they used to to older folks, respite service users, people with brain injuries, physical injuries or dementia.
‘It’s upsetting but we have been going the extra mile for so long and the government doesn’t seem to understand. We have to make it clear,’ said Hilary Briggs.
‘We actually can’t go on. We can’t retain staff. We can’t get people to start. And strikes like this don’t make it more attractive! It puts them off,’ said Hilary. Her workmates Lyne Cleland and Valerie Ferris agreed.
Spirits were high but their concerns were with the grassroots long-term staffing strategies for their services they’ve given years to maintaining and improving for the NHS.
‘People don’t know we aren’t getting paid enough to continue: a 17-year-old sitting at a till is paid nearly the same as us,’ Hilary continued. ‘It’s really up and coming staff we are doing this for.’
PAY, YES, PAY
‘It’s the morality of it.’ Rona pointed out. ‘Someone who is saving your life. The way society values that in real life.’ She gives the example of an ambulance man 23 years in the job who was not quite making 23,000 a year.
‘You and I would be glad to have him save your life.’ And yet she notes he’d be making just about enough if he was working at a fast food chain. How can staff be retained on low pay?
Though some strikers seem to be convinced the management doesn’t understand the impact of low-pay others see staff shorting as something of more a strategy to control staff and drive down worker morale and power.
SHORT STAFFED
‘Robert’, a porter in Ulster Hospital with Unison, was on the left end of the protest with his workmates Kyle and Mark. The drawing-and-quartering of the NHS is clear from their experience.
The last 6 years they’ve experienced low morale from persistent short-staffing due to improper resourcing. Robert knows. He’s been here for 23 and since the Acute Services Block opened things have changed utterly.
Asked how many porters currently work in total for Ulster Hospital they estimate ‘about 40’ and ‘only about a quarter are full-time.’
Capacity and activity have increased by 40% but no new workers have been taken on.
The management uses temporary staff on a ‘workforce’ system which allows workers to be let go at any time for any reason they said.
‘The Trust,’ they said, ‘pays a private company to supply the workers. Most are on just 20 hours a week. Most live in the local area.’
‘It costs them less they say, but it costs us as workers more. We pay for the service with our in tax. It’s not free. It costs us more though because it make the job harder than it should be. It costs those temporary short-hours contract workers a lot more- short hours, the stress, low pay, unreliable work… Why not just give them the jobs? We need them here.’
‘When we complain about the staffing levels we are told to just get on with it.’
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
People Before Profit is encouraging workers to argue for bigger, broader, continuous strikes with real power to bring the system to a stop.
The objective can’t be just to wake the DUP up to the anger of the workers. It has to be powerful enough to go all the way and topple the Tories.
We need to unite the fights in the hospital and bring every person who uses the NHS- the people- together behind the workers and support them coming out all together.
We can unite the fights in health, communications, education, and services- across all the places we work to make our society run. We need services run for the people who do the real heavy lifting- the workers, not the privatisers and profiteers.
Join People Before Profit and unite the fight for a shared future that works to rebuild the NHS and build a socialist future that puts people before profit.
