 Hi everyone and welcome to another issue of the People's Health Dispatch and today we are here to talk about the nurses strike in the United Kingdom which was a historic event actually in December last year. So we're joined here today by Anthony Johnson from Nurses United UK and we're going to talk a bit about what the strike is about what the nurses in the UK are asking for and what we can expect in the months and weeks to come. So hi Anthony and welcome welcome to the People's Health Dispatch. Thanks for having me on thanks Anna. So just you know to start maybe it would be useful to talk a bit about the reasons behind the strike so you know we've heard a lot of news about the cost of living crisis in the UK rising inflation and essentially you know what has been going on with the nurses and why what has led to the strike. Yeah sure I mean the reasons for the strike are pretty simple it's related to our patient safety you know for the last 12 years in the UK nurses or any NHS professionals at any healthcare professional in the UK hasn't had an inflation meeting pay increase so that means our pay has fallen we think by about a third since 2010 for the average nurse. That's meant that you've got about 50,000 nursing vacancies across the UK we've got about 135,000 vacancies across the entire of a health system so it's over roles and that ultimately puts our patient safety at risk. This year alone though inflation now is at about something like 14% in the UK so the government offering 4% when they'd already cut our pay substantially is a bit of a kick in the teeth and you know and it shows that they're you know throughout this process because obviously as you mentioned we've been taking industrial action they've refused to negotiate with us they've hidden by you know arms and bodies that they control and it's because they want to privatise the NHS that's what we know this is about this is you know people are trying to sometimes say that this is about just the cost of living but we know that this is about whether or not I'm going to have nurses with me on the shop floor at the end of the day helping to care for my patients whether or not I'm going to be able to do my job properly and whether or not the UK you know we're going to be able to keep our NHS which is something we're really proud of unfortunately this government doesn't seem to be pleased with it. And actually you already touched upon two of the things that I think health activists around the world have been discussing a lot and so that's the current state of the NHS which for such a long time was put forward as a bright example of how healthcare can function and how public it can be and how it can put health workers and patients first so maybe we could just spend a bit of time talking about what's actually happening in the NHS and what have you seen when it comes to privatisation strands there? Yeah sure I mean back in the day before I was even born the NHS has been trying to get privatised so I'm you know almost 30 now and since Margaret thought in the 80s there's been plans to privatise the NHS one of the I think he was a former chairman of the Conservative Party Oliver Letwin he wrote this playbook on how we would privatise the NHS and they followed it directly to have the Conservatives and unfortunately had had the Labour Party under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as well so we introduced an internal market where we had to put services up for tender to potentially private organisations even though the NHS is the only body that can deliver it so we waste five billion pounds a year every year doing that you know we built hospitals with private money but the interest rates on them are so high that you know for an investment I think it was an issue of about 10 billion we're going to have to pay about 90 billion over the course of those loans and we can't renegotiate them because the government wills not there you know there's loads of things that has been brought into like you know a failure to put workforce planning so we don't have enough staff back when I in 2000 we were writing about how we had an age in population not just of patients but of our staff and now we're getting to the point where third nurses are about to retire in the next five years and that's about 150,000 the government is saying well we're going to train 50,000 and everyone thinks they want to hit 50,000 but even then they're just the aspirations from them are not there and it's because they're taking money from private interests they want to privatise the NHS I would argue globally ideologically if you're a private healthcare organisation it makes sense to try to take down the NHS because it stops other countries from moving towards us and I would say at the end of the day the NHS is in name only now it doesn't it doesn't provide a universal service we've got ambulances queuing on outside A&E with patients taking two days to be handed over to be able to get a bed you know we can't discharge patients out into the community once they're well enough to do that because there's no social care provision and no community provision and those are the things that have changed you know drastically over my lifetime and it's not what the NHS is supposed to be about it's supposed to be a universal system cradle to grave and I know don't look it but I'm actually Anglo-Indian and my grandma's one of the nurses who came over in the 60s to help build the NHS and you know she came over because of like the aspirations of what the NHS would be and I feel like how broken to be honest that I'm a nurse who got into the role because I wanted to make a difference got into the role to you know contribute to public service like people in my family have done and I I'm probably going to be one of the people who gets to see the NHS go out because the thing that's happening in the UK is and I think is going to be the thing is instead of destroying the NHS what they're going to do is keep it as a brand but make it so that the state is providing private healthcare and very similar actually to Medicare for all you know the aspiration for the US and the reasons I've always had concerns with that is well what stops the private sector putting up prices and making loads of profits and money the NHS that you know a universal nationalised system is the solution to that and unfortunately it has been attacked undermined and I just hope that people you know globally but also in the UK have the where we've all to fight for it because you know if it's gone I think it's going to take a lot of work to bring it back and we need to I think there's a responsibility in the UK for us to keep it as like this example of what healthcare should be and at the moment it's not doing its job properly. I think it's very interesting you should mention that because you know we've had I mean not a similar experience but we have seen similar trends here in the Balkans so you know starting from something that was a public and a universal health system back in socialism and now where we're moving gradually or not even so gradually towards privatisation and it's interesting to see how the people relate to the system which was once accessible to all and it you know it was supposed to provide them care opposed to the government which has essentially lost that perspective it's now presented as something that cannot be done anymore it's like they're saying oh you know it's too big of a problem for us we cannot solve it without the without the support let's call it that way of the private sector and that's of course you know something that you've been dealing with in the UK for quite a bit of time and through a couple of governments now so maybe also useful to know a bit more about how the government is reacting to what you are trying to do right now. Yeah I mean so the government's refused to negotiate and they're doing that in every single industry though they refuse to negotiate when we've got rail strikes going on the thing the government I would say is successful at is having very strong messaging to the point where they just won't answer questions or have any accountability from the press at the moment so despite the fact that pay awards in the UK for the NHS are awarded by a group called the NHS Pay Review Body it's supposed to be an independent body that sets our pay award the problem is is that when the government wants to put forward a pay award they say that it's not allowed to go outside our targets for inflation they set the budget for it they appoint the people on that body I think there was someone who used to be on there from like some farming company so I think there's only one person who actively worked in the NHS anyway so they're forced to award what the government wants them to award and even then once they did that the government refused to fund the meager pay award that they did the government are hiding behind this body now they're saying oh you know it was an independent body that decided your pay award and then they're refusing to negotiate with any of our trade unions they're refusing to talk about at the moment a story that's been going throughout the UK this week has been that our entire NHS is collapsing there's a massive outbreaking flu and Covid and so it's meant that you know the stories I was talking about there's people waiting two days to be able to get in hospital in ambulances which is something that we'd never saw in the UK before there's tons of critical incidents being declared all across the NHS and everybody you know across the NHS is seeing like the NHS is literally collapsing you know right this week and the government aren't doing anything about it and I personally think that's because they want to wait until the strikes take place again on the 18th and 19th of January and turn around and blame the strikes for it that's what they wanted it because they do that all the time you know in every single sector where especially even where they've privatised it they've created the problems they're the ones who set the policies but then they just wait for an opportune moment to blame workers in this case or members of the public depending on what service it is and that's again I think something that you know we can see in different countries because it's it's always when the health workers strike happens the the government is quite quick to say oh you know the nurses they're putting their patients behind they're leaving their patients behind they don't care about what happens the doctors are doing the same the ambulance drivers are doing the same when in fact we know that the health workers take industrial action when there's no no other option left so it's actually about protecting the health system and that's why it's important that you're still planning to to do industrial action over the next weeks could you tell us a bit more about that perhaps yeah sure so there's actions that gonna be planned so our main union for nursing is the Royal College of Nursing and actions planned if the government doesn't come to the table and they're already making signs that they want to give us another real terms pay cut with the 2023 award and I think that one of the important things that's been important in the UK but I'm sure globally is being like we've seen how little care there is from governments and sometimes institutions about health care workers even in a global pandemic where people are literally dying and there was about I think something like a thousand health workers in the UK who died because we were in bin bags a lack of PPE and because our government through cuts didn't put put any emergency plan preparedness so we know the cash out and we're going to keep doing it until we get the government to come to the table okay so thanks very much Anthony if maybe you want to add something or if you think that there's something that we should keep an eye out in particular over the next next weeks this is the time to do so yeah I think that like obviously we really appreciate any support and solidarity so I can see my rooms getting a bit dark we really support appreciate any solidarity from anywhere around the world with these strikes and if anyone's got anything else going on we'd obviously want to support it too but the other thing to just remember is you know the government's behavior and the way that they're doing this the way that they're behaving affects people unfortunately globally like the government failing to train enough nurses because I was part of the campaign to try you know protect how many nurses we trained back like seven years ago has now meant the government's plan to hit its workforce targets is to hire nurses from the Philippines and from India and in these countries you know they obviously have a lower ratio of nurses to patients than we we do you know they have a worse ratio sorry and so ultimately that's the problem of like our fight is everyone else's fight we know that our healthcare systems are connected we know that we all need to be supporting each other because if we don't it's going to harm us all the six million nurses I think short globally and it shouldn't be the case that we're taking advantage of nurses from the global south and unfortunately because I work in Essex what you see is we're promising people a better quality of life and the ability to help you know send money back to their families and it's not the case inflation is so high that you can't like get by you're living in really inhospitable conditions and unfortunately because I would say the NHS is institutionally racist being treated like dirt as well sometimes you know the nurses who are international nurses with the nurses who've got moved to work in hot wards unfortunately because of how the NHS operates and that shouldn't have happened and that's the thing you know we need to make sure that we all stick together in this fight because everyone should have a freedom to be healthy basically. Thanks so much Anthony.