IN AN EXPLOSIVE INTERVIEW, TWO SWANSEA ICU NURSES TELL VOICE WALES THAT THEY’VE BEEN ‘STABBED IN THE BACK’ AFTER THE GOVERNMENT TOLD THEM THEIR PAY WOULD BE FROZEN
THEY SAY THAT DESPITE PUTTING THEMSELVES AT RISK OF DEATH FIGHTING COVID, SOME NHS WORKERS CAN’T EVEN AFFORD TO PAY THEIR BILLS BECAUSE OF LOW PAY
HEALTH WORKERS SET TO PROTEST ACROSS WALES ON SATURDAY AS PART OF A UK WIDE DAY OF ACTION DEMANDING A PAY RISE FOR NHS WORKERS SNUBBED BY THE GOVERNMENT
THE REACTION TO THE PROTESTS HAS BEEN HUGE AS THE MOOD FOR A FIGHT BACK SPREADS, WITH SUPPORTERS ENCOURAGED TO COME, MAINTAIN DISTANCING AND WEAR FACE MASKS
Image: Steve Eason
Two intensive care nurses from Swansea have spoken to voice.wales about why they are ready to fight for a pay rise after a decade of falling wages and the sacrifices they have made during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Healthcare workers across South Wales are organising a series of major protests this coming Saturday as part of a UK wide day of action calling for a pay rise for all NHS staff. Events are due to take place in Cardiff, Swansea, Merthyr and Bridgend (full details below)
It comes after the majority of NHS workers – including nurses, junior doctors, health care assistants and auxiliary staff – were left out of recent UK government plans for a pay rise for some public sector workers. The Tory Health Secretary Matt Hancock made the excuse that these workers were already in a three year pay deal so could not be included in the pay rise (which in itself is minimal).
But two nurses who spoke to voice say this won’t wash, and that workers in the NHS have been pushed to the edge by the experience of dealing with Covid.
In spite of the sacrifices they have made to save people’s lives during the pandemic, they say many nurses are struggling to survive on low pay, with some getting into debt and even relying on food banks to feed themselves.
Rebecca and Louise are both intensive care unit (ICU) nurses in Swansea who worked throughout the pandemic, often for over 40 hours a week. They saw the true effect of Covid-19 up front, putting themselves at huge risk at a time when 540 health and social care workers died from the virus across the UK.
In a startling interview, they told voice that the experience has brought them together as a group of workers, and given them the motivation to fight a Tory government which has not only left them out of a pay rise but cut their pay for the last ten years.
“It just felt like a real kick in the teeth for us, particularly as nurses. A lot of us have been right at the frontline, whether you’re in intensive care, you’re in a&e or you’re up on the wards,” says Louise.
“If you look at inflation and then look at our pay raise schemes that we’ve had in the last decade, we’ve taken a 20% pay cut.” says Rebecca.
They say that the government has had them ‘over a moral barrel’ as many workers have been reticent about taking strike action given how important their jobs are. But now the mood is changing.
“When you’ve had Covid that’s come in,” says Rebecca. “And you’ve worked a twelve and a half hour shift in full PPE…I think COVID has been the force behind us now turning around and going, we just don’t want to deal with this anymore, we’re gonna put up a fight now.”
The pair say the risk that health workers have been put under has been so huge that many have been forced to contemplate the fact that they could have died from Coronavirus.
“A lot of my colleagues that have had [children], they’ve been worried sick about thinking they’re going to bring this disease back into their family home and they’re going to pass it on to their children or their partners,” says Louise.
Rebecca says that some of her co-workers have even been worried about passing away and leaving their children without a parent. “That’s what a lot of them were scared about. They were writing wills, they were writing letters to their children and things like that.”
The situation was made worse by the shortages of PPE, as frontline workers were put at risk by the total lack of planning for a pandemic. “We weren’t being protected as much as we should have been. So yeah, it was a really scary time for us and a lot of our colleagues,” says Rebecca.
They say the whole experience has led to a mood among workers in the NHS that the time has come to fight back.
“There’s not a single person in the NHS at the moment that is at all happy,” says Rebecca.
“And it’s not just nurses that were at the forefront. We had domestic cleaners who ended up being unwell, we had receptionists who were unwell, we had junior doctors – who also aren’t involved in the pay raise.”
She says that everybody involved in the dispute is “just so angry.”
“We’ve been put forward, we’ve been willing to pay with our lives but they aren’t willing to pay us fairly and I think that’s the general feeling in the NHS at the moment.”
“There’s a lot of nurses who I know, they can’t afford a mortgage or bills on full time work on NHS hours. So they then have to go and work agency shifts or bank shifts on top of a full time job, just to pay the bills. And then when you’re doing things like that, and you’re putting your life at risk, and then being told you’re already in a [pay] scheme which isn’t even any good.”
The two nurses say that they believe the mood is such that health workers would vote for strike action if unions such as Unison and the Royal College of Nursing were to organise a ballot. Both unions are supporting the protests in different ways but are not centrally involved. The day of action has instead been organised from the bottom up, with health workers initiating the demonstrations and running them by themselves.
The reaction to the initiative has been huge, with not only other NHS workers saying they’ll come out but also other workers who struggle on low pay. Rebecca says she was shocked at how the groups set up on facebook to organise the protests have ballooned in size.
“I think this alone shows the mood – the amount of people that are going to these protests on their days off, which are few and far between.”
They hope the action will be supported by other workers and could inspire them to fight back as well.
“A lot of jobs nowadays don’t meet rising inflation,” says Louise. “And so I really hope it does inspire others to kind of fight for equal pay and equal recognition.”
“I think we found out in the pandemic which sectors you would need to make a country run,” adds Rebecca. “I hope that these [protests] do make a spark in the community.”
Both Rebecca and Louise say their main focus is on the Tory government in Westminster, who they say are the “primary funding” source when it comes to pay. And they contrast the solidarity received from the public to the hypocrisy of the Tory government.
“It’s not the public. The public were out, they were clapping. Their admiration for the NHS really shined through. But to me, it’s the government coming out and clapping and commending the NHS heroes, and then completely and utterly feeling like we’ve been stabbed in the back after that.”
They also say they have taken inspiatrtion from the recent wave of anti-racist protests which have swept the country under the balck lives matter movement.
“I think seeing how it started to create change within some communities, and people’s mindset, I think it has kind of inspired us a little bit to think okay, actually, if we protest our voices do get heard, our voices will eventually get heard,” says Louise.
Rebecca agrees: “I think in protests as well, you give the public the truth.. This is something that’s been decades in the making. And now I think that people have just decided that enough is enough.
The protests will be:
CARDIFF – 10.45am, Wales Millenium Centre with march to the Senedd.
MERTHYR – 11 am, Merthyr Fountain
SWANSEA – 11 am, Castle Gardens
BRIDGEND – 10 am, PoW Hospital
For more information please see: https://www.facebook.com/events/286752129081799/
