Rishi Sunak is working on tough new anti-strike laws

Its also a load of shit this 16hr thing.. most carers are on ZHC with agencies... are older.. & have partners that work, so don't even qualify... + many EU carers left the workforce... but the main reason is its a min wage job.. done by women.. thats the issue that no one in Govt wants to address.

Hence Johnsons "we fixed SC" never considered pay...or why Steve Barclay will not talk pay with the RCN... they'd rather look at why we don't have enough bankers in the UK & continue the strikes.

Train drivers pay is not a part of the current railway strike.

It's pay for other (very low paid) staff. Seems like you should learn a bit more about what's happening rather than making silly comments.

Govt want strikes, they see it as a way to drive a wedge between the public, Labour and the workforces involved.... and they 'll do it again with the health service... pleading to end the strikes/patient suffering... whilst behind the scenes making sure it continues.
“The more I think about it … I’m a woman negotiating for a 90% female profession that is trying to operate with a government that’s particularly macho and tends to operate with a bullyboy tactic. Perhaps that’s the reason why we can’t get moving forward. By refusing to negotiate Steve Barclay is ignoring nurses and ignoring me

I think there’s an issue here with us being female. I ask myself, would that [refusal to negotiate] be different if it was a 90% male profession and I was a male? I truly believe it would be. I think we’d be treated differently,” said Cullen, whose union represents 500,000 nurses across the UK.

In a direct attack on Rishi Sunak and his government, she added: “And that links back to the value of caring and it being female work. Nurses showed the importance of care during the pandemic, the importance of being with a patient at their real hour of need, the importance of being there to hold their hand and see them leave this world and say: ‘It’s OK, we’ll be here.’ That’s all perceived by those people, by those men, as female jobs, female work, and that they can treat us like that.”

More than a grain of truth in her statement.

is this what our 'managed decline' looks like?
Britannia unchained? sinks beneath the waves more like

There has been a huge failure in workforce planning over the last decade
even though the population is getting older and sicker...I suppose the 2 are related, we are all to old and sick to look after the old and sick, no-ones up to doing that kind of grueling work any more, we all need it, none of us want to provide it, and even if we did the gvt wont pay enough to make it worth our while!

FT Exclusive: UK ministers blocked a possible deal to call off this month’s rail strikes by preventing the industry from offering unions higher pay deals and adding tough new conditions at the last minute on.ft.com/3BlQgc0

twitter.com/financialtimes/status/1601192466622857216?s=46&t=Mfdv68YuyB04Ctlnht21tw

I agree @Notonthestairs but school is 8.45 to 3.45. Even 5.5 hours a day is 27.5 a week. Notwithstanding that some shifts could be worked around partners where necessary.

Possibly Roses. Although it might be those HCA are limited in what work they can do due to other responsibilities (adequate affordable childcare outside of ordinary working hours for example).

Excellent points @KnittedCardi
I hear what you say there @Notonthestairs however at the HCA, care assistant and nursing levels to an extent I suspect some of the structural issues around claiming universal crsot are to blame. Something has to be done about the 16 hour rule that prevents those able to and qualified to work from working more. There need urgently to be initiatives that stop this. If people in shortage occupations are turning down work their benefits need to cease.

I imagine having vast numbers of vacant Dr & Nursing posts might have something to do with performance.
Retention of staff in healthcare has been at crisis point for years. There has been a huge failure in workforce planning over the last decade.

The Workforce: recruitment, training and retention report outlines the scale of the workforce crisis: new research suggests the NHS in England is short of 12,000 hospital doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives; evidence on workforce projections say an extra 475,000 jobs will be needed in health and an extra 490,000 jobs in social care by the early part of the next decade; hospital waiting lists reached a record high of nearly 6.5 million in April. The report finds the Government to have shown a marked reluctance to act decisively. The refusal to do proper workforce planning risked plans to tackle the Covid backlog - a key target for the NHS.
The number of full-time equivalent GPs fell by more than 700 over three years to March 2022, despite a pledge to deliver 6,000 more. Appearing before the inquiry, the then Secretary of State Sajid Javid admitted he was not on track to deliver them.

committees.parliament.uk/committee/81/health-and-social-care-committee/news/172310/persistent-understaffing-of-nhs-a-serious-risk-to-patient-safety-warn-mps/

Persistent understaffing in the NHS poses a serious risk to staff and patient safety, a situation compounded by the absence of a long term plan by the government to tackle it.
“We now face the greatest workforce crisis in history in the NHS and in social care with still no idea of the number of additional doctors, nurses and other professionals we actually need. NHS professionals know there is no silver bullet to solve this problem but we should at least be giving them comfort that a plan is in place. This must be a top priority for the new Prime Minister.”
Jeremy Hunt.

Very good points!

So much grievance is a local level though. Not all trusts are striking, and not all trusts are in a terrible state. You only have to look at comparison tables. So some trusts are obviously run better than others, we have known that for some time. They manage their budgets better, and get better results with what they have. Some of that is demographics, age and poverty, but much is not.

Where we are now, this minute, is because we have failed to have a joined up system between NHS and social care. Those trusts who are trialling shared budgets are finding results are improving. Also, the NHS shut down pretty much entirely during Covid, no other healthcare system in the world did that. Again, bad decisions, bad organisation.

On staffing, the entire world has a nursing shortage. Every major economy is fighting for a small pool of staff. I think we have to accept that pay has to go up to attract and retain staff, but also, someone, somewhere needs to get an effing grip. The money is now there, but the performance hasn't improved. It is not even up to where it was pre-Covid let alone increasing capacity.

Every NHS employee I meet tells me the NHS is marvellous. And yet they are striking due to their pay but dressing it up as being about patient care. Surely it can't be both. I'd have more time if there were more honesty

Really? never ever heard that.. not for years, my mum was a nurse my DD a AHP.

My DD and her friends say its chaotic, failing and patient safety has fallen through the floor... staff are leaving and yet the problems are due to "Greedy Unions" FFS .. Unions are the nurses... they are the people doing the work... so what your really doing is calling nurses "greedy" and "selfish"

Actually, i do agree with @ExpectMore with her belief that the instead of strikes people should resign.. correct and thats why the NHS has over 110k vacancies.. folk are voting with their feet and i say Well Done!

People need to see the reality of their voting choices over the years.

But i am Notonthestairs👏👏👏

Yes I guessed you werent applauding my post.

Train drivers arent on strike.

Trade unions have to follow highly prescriptive processes laid out in legislation brought in by the Government of the day. The last round of applicable legislation was introduced in 2017 by the Conservatives.

Sorry - I replied to the wrong comment!

👏

The argument seems to be certain sectors must have their right to strike withdrawn because they are critical to running of the country.

But they are not so critical as to need their wages to track inflation for the last decade.

We shouldnt rely on nurses having a vocation - we should be making that job as attractive as possible to attract staff and - as importantly - retain them (because as we have already established they are critical to the future of the country).

The Government can find money to pay off DUP in NI, to repurpose and repaint a trade plane, to order a new royal yacht, have a festival of Brexit, send nonrefundable £110 million to Rwanda etc etc.
They can find it when £££ when it suits their political aims.

The proportions required to carry a strike vote are deeply flawed. They are based on the percentage of the membership voting which takes into account the no votes. If the no voters abstained the motion would not be carried. I don't think the unions share that with their members so I question who meets the definition of a dictatorship to be fair.

Every NHS employee I meet tells me the NHS is marvellous. And yet they are striking due to their pay but dressing it up as being about patient care. Surely it can't be both. I'd have more time if there were more honesty.

Train drivers on £60k, Lecturers on £50k with generous hols, fantastic pensions and sick pay.

Reaches for mop for bleeding heart.

Another conspiracy theory!

Have you ever read the book "games people play"?

I'd highly recommend it.

One key point of it is how people often invent stories that they play over and over again that justifies their own short comings...

Politicians exist to help them make money, that's why they are put in power
Yes!
imagine that there's one tank containing the wealth generated by people who do the essential work in the country, politicians come along with big long tubes and syphon that wealth out and into the tanks owned and controlled by the wealthy and Powerful.

Don't expect anyone to then believe their boohoo crying about not being able to pay nurses
It is true though, they can't give money to the nurses because to them it's much more important to keep giving money to the rich, they pretend to care about the people to keep them sweet so that enough of them are deferential enough to keep voting for them. But their goal is to make themselves and people like them as rich as possible and naturally the poor people will have to take the hit for that.... because they are just poor people who don't matter!

My son asked to borrow money last week for his bills as he was just soooooooo poor

You know what undermined his argument?

He'd just bought a brand new shiny car for himself and was going on holiday next week.

It's kinda like that ..

I didn't fall for his claims of poverty then, and I'm not believing it now from my sad government who just have nooooooo money to pay the nurses