Ambulance strike is disgraceful?

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I just read this on bbc news, "Unions say life-threatening callouts will continue to be responded to over the next 24 hours but some urgent calls, for example for late-stage labour or a fall in the home, might not be answered."

Is it just me who thinks this is disgraceful?

Late stage labour at home or an elderly person laying with a broken hip ARE emergencies! I'm not sure how people in a caring profession can strike knowing these calls will go unanswered.

The unions talk about the backlog, paramedics stuck outside hospitals in ambulances unable to unload and go back out on the road but then admit they are striking for more pay rather than as a protest about that. The average salary of ambulance staff of £47,000 and a 4% pay rise isn't enough they claim but if they are given a pay rise, they will stop striking.

I think they do deserve more money (we all do with inflation) but I can't get past them supposedly being in a caring profession but taking steps that WILL cause extra deaths regardless.

I work in the private sector and have had zero pay rise. If I went on strike nobody would die and I'd be fired. This approach is abusing the critical position of their roles. I hope they are not given a pay rise as it will just demonstrate that blackmail works to other public sector workers and we will have even more strikes.

YABU = I support them striking
YANBU = I agree, it's disgraceful behaviour from a caring profession

If my loved one dies my anger will be directed at the Tory government who has allowed this to happen, not the nurses who don't want this to happen. They have no choice and deserve decent pay.

Anyone condemning them and not the government can fuck right off.

We've had ambulances queuing outside A n E since Labour shut all our local ones with glee many years ago. Since then we haven't had a decent service that can treat people in adequate time. 15 years of queuing on trolleys, 15 years of waiting hours for an ambulance.

The service is a shambles here and no one has given a shite that people have died here needlessly for a long time. Blame the paramedics today but who will people blame the other 364 days of the year?

27k is no where near enough for the crap they have to deal with and what they have to endure mentally and physically. Some people get more than that on benefits!

You couldn't get an ambulance before the strike anyway, people were dying, laying on floors for over 24 hours, having cardiac arrests while waiting in ambulance crews. It was already happening!

@user18596463 did you read my post properly? Unions AND control - control will flag which ones need to be responded to (as is their job) and then the unions will manage those striking and send them... please do not twist thinfs

And bankrupt the country with pay rises of 19%!!!!!!!

Are you kidding!!!!!

Venetia will you support the education strikes on the horizon?

YABVU. It isn't just about money, as with all of the strikes. It is also about working conditions. Last September (2021) I sat in an ambulance with my Dad, who was in end of life care, outside a hospital for 3 hours. Eventually they took him in and put him in resuc, which isn't where he needed to be but there was room. "Luckily" in my Dad's situation it wasn't life or death at that point and he wasn't in immense pain but he definitely needed to be admitted and by ambulance.
While sat in the ambulance I was chatting to the paramedics and they were out of their usual area and by that I mean they would normally cover the other half of the county but had been sent out of area due to need and they told me that there had been times when crews could spend a whole shift sat with one patient in an ambulance outside a hospital waiting for a space. This wasn't what they signed up for. The government need to fix this

The timing of the strike at a period of winter illness increases (as it is every winter) is despicable. There are
Many other ways to fight with your employer without leaving an emergency service even more vulnerable. Govt have offered what was recommended by an independent pay review body.

What will get you back to work?

19% is a figure given by the unions as a starting point of negotiations. It's hardly as if every paramedic has said they will only accept 19%. They are guided by the unions

Genuine question - can someone tell me what an ambulance driver earns? Is it in line with nurses?
I am always staggered at the level of support for strikers on MN, when in the real world it's the opposite I find in general.
I think there's a lot of gameplay by the unions as well.
Certainly, the RCN reps interviewed imply that nurses earn very low wages without stating actual figures, talk about 12-hour days without clarifying this is the shift pattern they signed up to and imply that all nurses save lives on a daily basis, which in reality means they check blood, oxygen etc to check there's nothing amiss, which they have been trained to do. Yes, there will be some nurses saving lives in intensive care etc but they are paid substantially more than early £20k.
I am always called out on MN and i do try to avoid threads about nurses because my opinions are so different to the hive, but I do get fed up with the unquestioning attitude and hero worship towards a profession which is well paid to do the job they chose to be trained to do.
I am wondering if ambulance drivers are the same?

They could answer cat 2 calls

They didn't need to stop answering the most serious of calls.

You lose public support when your choice is to let people die, knowingly.

Oh dear another one that needs to Look up the definition of negotiation

I don't think it's disgraceful. Paramedics make really silly money for such stressful and hard job. I don't want to sound as hypocrite though, I said in previous thread that I just can't afford tax increase, as my salary is quite similar to theirs :(

Why would striking in May or June make a difference?

Do you really think the General Secretaries of the various unions will be personally triaging calls? The vast majority of union officials do not get paid anything for their union duties other than expenses.

YABU. I support NHS staff 100% in their strikes.

Care has been compromised far too much before the strikes and that is the fault of this useless fucking government running the NHS into the fucking ground. Be angry with Sunak and co who refuse to negotiate or compromise. Not the staff at the end of their collective tether.

47k? Oh wow I wonder why DH has been hiding the rest of his salary 🙄 he just left but was senior para band 6, and took home 40k. That's with unsocial hours

And if anyone has blood on their hands, it's the Govt that has refused to enter into more talks to avert the strike. The ambulance service and unions have pleaded with Steve Barclay to help them stop this and he's refused. He's the one trying to play God.

Yes, there will be some nurses saving lives in intensive care etc but they are paid substantially more than early £20k.

I work in intensive care, nicu specifically. I don't get paid any more than other nurses. I get paid the same as a nurse on a general ward or in outpatients. We are all on the same agenda for change payscale.

YABU. Ambulance staff do not earn 47k. Stop believing everything you read in the Daily Mai.

Your ignorance on this issue is mind-bending. If you feel so strongly as you claim, then why wouldn't you educate yourself?

Innocents WILL DIE because they chose to strike

People are ALREADY DYING because the ambulance service wards are chronically under-staffed and under-resourced! It is well documented that in some areas staffing levels have been higher on strike days.

They didn’t have to strike. They really didn’t.

HCP's are leaving the profession in droves and nothing is being done by the Government to address the recruitment and retention crisis in the NHS. Let's hear your brilliant suggestions then! Because Nurses, medics and allied HCP's have been raising the alarm and lobbying the Government for years and have been wilfully ignored.

And looking at photos of the nurses grinning ear to ear because it’s some fucking jolly for them while the patients they abandoned are suffering and dying just shows how little the public think of the lives of the vulnerable.

A jolly?? You do realise people don't get paid when they're on strike, don't you? It beggars belief that people could be so dense to think that workers who have endured years of real-terms pay cuts are willing to lose yet more pay, in the run up to Christmas and during a COL crisis, just for shits and giggles! If they were stood on the picket line crying they would be accused of milking it for public sympathy. But because someone has managed to snap a pic of some nurses smiling (how dare they!) they're callous and unfeeling.

Nurses haven't "abandoned" the sick and vulnerable, the Government have.

Salary quoted is rubbish and the ambulance service is not just about paramedics
the service functions with drivers, admin, call handlers and dispatchers plus unbelievably volunteers
all of whom should be paid a fair wage for the work they do
also ambulance services are not just about immediate emergencies in the home or community - people forget about transfers between hospitals often for people who are critically ill eg when no itu beds - these take priority

There are and has always been lots of militants on here.

No one in real life can support a cat 2 call out strike because we know that means people will actually die and have no chance to survive.

If the NHS is collapsing and the strike is about that, then they have just sped up the whole process. It is painful to watch the poor patients losing their lives in the process. Out of this awful tragedy that is playing out before us, people might well decide we can not carry on, and really understand the need for massive reform.

Maybe this is what is going to make it happen. I feel for the poor people that will die in agony today. And on the 28th.

How do the strikers think this will pan out exactly? Kicking the remains of the NHS into the ashes once and for all.

I think the whole country should walk out of their slave labour jobs to be honest. Not only medical staff. Maybe the government will then take their heads out of their bottoms and face the brutal reality

To those who think this is my 2nd thread on this, it's really not. This is my first. I've been here years.

I'm amazed that people are ok with them not responding to cat2 calls. Do you realise that can include some heart attacks. car accidents?

The unions are blackmailing us. They've picked winter season and the week before Christmas.

There are people who won't be here to see Christmas with their loved ones because of today's strikes. Do people really value human life so little?

I do blame the government too and I won't vote conservative at the next election but that doesn't make this ok.