Strikes in the British public service reflect unrest over wages and working conditions
The UK Government Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, has stated that the unions representing public ambulance service staff, who went on strike this Wednesday, “made a conscious decision to harm patients”. The unions accuse him of lying because they negotiated the emergency service’s operating conditions with local public health structures.
Ambulance workers’ salaries this year are back at 2010 levels. According to their representatives, more than a third of salaries are due to compensation for shifts and overtime. One tenth of workers want to change jobs for another job that offers them a better quality of life. And the deaths and aggravations of patients in ambulances waiting for hours for hospital access to be released have increased over the past year.
The bitterness of the allegations between the government and unions reached its highest level on Wednesday. The Executive is pushing for a 4% increase for healthcare workers, which means a drop in purchasing power at 10.7% inflation. The increase in salaries in the public sector over the past year is estimated at 2.7% and in the private sector at 6.9%. There are 133,000 job vacancies in the NHS.
The strikers insist their malaise is not just about money. Nurses or ambulance personnel point to working conditions as an essential factor. A paramedic told the BBC the pressure on the service is similar to that experienced during the pandemic, but without the resources the government deployed to the emergency two years ago.
Health managers have asked the population to be careful not to saturate demand. For example, do not drink alcohol to excess, a source of enormous daily pressure for emergency services.
Source: La Verdad
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