Monday 13 October 2014

There For Us, There For Them

Suzanne Moore writes:

It is well known that midwives are hardline militants who are only in it for the money.

Apart from delivering the occasional baby, looking after mothers, fathers and entire families, working antisocial hours and doing lots of unpaid overtime, running clinics for ante and postnatal care, surviving on chocolate left by the thankful, what do they really do all day and night?

Why should their wages be kept in line with inflation?

This is the point, isn’t it? We do know what midwives, ambulance staff, paramedics and hospital porters do. 

Without getting misty-eyed or pretending everyone is an angel, many of us will have experienced their grace under pressure. This is why there is much sympathy for today’s strike.

If that sympathy cannot be expressed as solidarity by the Labour leadership, one wonders, yet again, what Labour is for.

If Labour cannot stand by these workers who are not all being offered even a 1% pay rise– yet another Jeremy Hunt fallacy – then where does it stand?

There has long been a shortage of midwives, as any woman who has given birth in the past 15 years will tell you.

A qualified midwife will start on less than £21,500 so we are not talking about huge salaries here.

These salaries, alongside those of paramedics, ambulance workers and porters, have declined in real terms by 15% under this government.

David Cameron may get emotional for the cameras about his personal experience of the NHS, and that emotion may be real, but the reality is that this government has ignored frontline staff, bringing in reforms from the top down that have caused further damage.

The consequences are now being felt, with low morale and a difficulty in retaining staff.

The privatisation of the NHS means we have skilled but low-paid workers taking on second jobs just to manage.

Hunt’s shameful dissembling is shabby beyond belief, even involving shroud waving about Mid Staffordshire, as if this were an answer to this unfair pay deal.

Those on strike today are reluctant: the 1% rise only goes to those at the top of their pay bands and will thus be denied to 60% of NHS workers.

The government is so arrogant that it has ignored the advice of an independent pay review and this is why core professionals will walk out of hospital wards today.

These are the people who will be expected to don protective gear and go out and deal with suspected Ebola cases.

If we value the NHS we value those within it. Solidarity with this strike is the spontaneous reaction of many, alongside a sadness that it has come to this.

It arises out of a sense of basic fairness and because many of us will have encountered their skills and kindness at first hand.

As it is revealed that £5bn a year in the NHS is wasted on overpaying for supplies and on agency work, we must be clear what we do value and reward it.

The NHS is free at the point of need and these are the individuals who are there at the point of our greatest need.

They need our support to ensure a living wage and we should give it. It is our turn to be there for them.

No comments:

Post a Comment