By Gen Doy
FROM 3 TO 5 SEPTEMBER operating theatre nurses at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals in London have been on strike, protesting against management demands that they should no longer finish their shifts at 8pm but at 9pm. Hence their slogan, ‘We will stand, we will block, we won’t work till 9 o’clock!’
This unreasonable demand to already hard-working, indeed overworked staff is an example of what will happen if Labour’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting gets his plans to increase NHS productivity. up and running. Instead of investing in the NHS with more well-trained and better-paid staff, his idea is to squeeze more out of existing staff and increase payment to private companies working in, and with, the NHS.
Carol, a theatre nurse, explained how a 9pm finish to a shift would make life difficult for staff. Theatre operations often run over time; you can’t just walk out and leave a patient. So nurses often finish later than their official end-of-shift. Already tired, they then have to travel home across London, only to return to work at 8.30am the next morning.
If they have children, childcare becomes more difficult to arrange. Also staff arrive home when their kids are in bed asleep and they leave in the morning without being able to spend time with them. I asked whether the hospitals have childcare provided for staff. Unsurprisingly the answer was no.
Ninety nurses who are members of Unite union demonstrated outside the Department of Health and NHS England and on the final day of the current strike a noisy and resolute demonstration marched to Downing Street for a rally. After that nurses held a meeting opposite Downing Street to discuss what actions to take next to win their dispute.
Good wishes and solidarity to the theatre nurses, and let’s support all health workers on strike. Many NHS staff see Wes Streeting’s plans for what they are, i.e. exploiting workers instead of taxing the super-rich.
Indeed several hundred of healthcare support staff also strike on the last two days of the Guy’s and St Thomas’ strike at neighbouring Greenwich and Lewisham Hospitals. These workers regularly carry out clinical duties normally performed by nurses. They demand the regrading of their posts to Band 3 to reflect their real work.
It is essential that NHS workers in different hospitals and different unions link up their struggles, so they can punch above their weight as it were. This is one of the most important lessons of the 2022-23 strike wave, which saw ambulance crews, nurses and doctors all fighting separately and as a result achieving less.
Health workers were rightly hailed as heroic during the covid pandemic. They can be just as heroic in fighting against exploitation, demanding safe staffing levels, and thereby safeguarding the welfare of their patients.
