Ambulance strike is disgraceful?

[somethingdifferenttoday]

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

Doubt it. I would also like to know what they do for a living …

Of course not, that's the perogative of the militant right-wing politicians.

Ok let’s say the government give everyone raise the salary from 47k to 57k. Will it really make that much difference? I just can’t see that fixing the issue. I’m no more likely to be a paramedic because of that 10k.

there’s still too many people, too many old people needing social care. Too few hospitals.

I don’t think a payrise will help in long term. I recently got a payrise and actually… I just pay more tax, get no child benefit anymore and more student loan. It was barely worth it to be honest.

I work in private sector and when I started was on 21k. With experience of course it goes up. I think there’s nothing wrong with newbies starting on lower salaries either.

YABU.

I absolutely support the strikes. Ambulance crews deserve to be treated well - they need to be in a position where they can work safely to save lives.

Yeah well we know that’s a lie. You cannot simultaneously strike AND have more staff working than usual. Especially when supposedly there are not enough staff to begin with for minimum “patient safety”

Both cannot be true. A strike means even less staff than usual, that’s the whole point of a strike.

I support all the strikes absolutely. No one should be paid shit salaries.

l hope they bring the government down.

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.

You're not that important, then. Neither am I, although I do have a legal right to strike in accordance with the law. You'd benefit from union membership so your interests can be represented and you'd be protected from an unscrupulous employer, though.

GP's are statistically seeing more patients f2f than ever before.
And there are less of them.

Yes it was ten pages back

We need an all party agreement to reform the NHS and social care.
This is too big and too important for any one party.

We need urgent and total reformation of the NHS and an overhaul - the biggest this country has ever seen.

If the teachers flounce

I'm going to hazard a guess you are a die-hard true blue. You talk about strikers having blood on their hands but what about the voters who ushered this shitshower of Govt into power? Do they not hold some responsibility for what's happening?

You are wrong.
We have newly qualified nurses in nicu. We have band 5 nurses who care for babies on respiratory support. I'm a band 5 and look after babies with central lines, tpn, bipap. I get paid the same as my friend who works in outpatients.

Hahaha when someone actually suggests fascism is the answer they’ve already lost the argument.

Sorry my comment was to @Katypp. It didn't quote for some reason

YABU
I have spent a huge amount of time in the past few days experiencing the crisis first hand including a seriously unbelievably long wait in an ambulance outside a&e with a relative.
During that wait I was hearing cat1 red calls come across the radio and the crews say there were no ambulances thats NONE at all, to go out to them because they were all here waiting with us to handover and all the other local hospitals were the same or closed to admission as the were full. The crews were so frustrated and tired as they had no breaks.
The staff in a&e were similarly broken by the lack of resources and support.
The people were all wonderful, apologetic and very kind but the system is broken and we can't keep limping along and hoping it's going to change as clearly the government really don't give a shit - people don't have to do this job and if you treat them badly enough they will just go, if this is what is needed for people to understand this then it has to be done.
The cover of service is no longer there, it's not the strikes that are worrying it's the circumstances that are already here.

YABU - funny you didn’t enable voting!

Ok and what do these reforms look like? Some kind of shrinkage of service I would hazard to guess? And what happens in the meantime?

Well an unplanned emergancy home birth is not a life threatening emergancy... its a DOUBLE life threatening emergancy.

I will be “flouncing” with pride in the hopes that education improves for our future generation!

It is disgraceful that they have been put in a position where they feel the only way they can be heard is to strike. They are so stretched that the conditions they work in are unsafe, and their pay has been significantly eroded due to inflation and (unsurprisingly) difficulty in recruitment. Ambulance workers did not go into their jobs to strike. This is the last resort for people who want to give care to usually extremely ill people but are being impeded from doing so because of conditions imposed by the relentless dismantling of the NHS. This disgusting narrative of greedy nurses and ambulance drivers by certain sections of the press at the behest of their political masters (the very ones who were praising them 2 years ago) means that people like you think it’s ok to get out the dog whistle and point at people who are trying to protect the services we rely on, rather than looking at the real culprits. Bread and circuses, eh?

I think we should start paying properly for healthcare. Not through taxes. Look round world and see what models work best.

@Katapolts

I fully support a pay increase for paramedics what I don’t support is the way they are going about it , someone who could have a stroke / be in the last stage of labour may not get an ambulance today that’s not right

But people leaving IS the alternative to allowing them a right to strike. That is the simple reality.

This strike, and all the other strikes currently happening, could have been averted or stopped by a government that showed willingness to come to the table and negotiate. Instead it is seriously expecting people in incredibly stressful jobs to continue on low pay whilst at the same time going home to houses they can't afford to heat and families they can't afford to feed. Additionally, the government has to take responsibility for those rising prices. Ignoring or minimising the importance of those facts is what makes you a propaganda parrot.

YABU

The NHS is broken, possibly deliberately. There's hardly any service anyway. It's about pay but also about people not being willing to work in dire circumstances any more (especially if they can't afford their mortgage).

My DH has been a paramedic for over a decade. He is not on shift today but supports the strike. It is also not true that paramedics have never been on strike before - DH certainly has and was interviewed by BBC news on the picket line. Think it was 2014.

No one in the ambulance service wants to harm patients- that's a huge part of why they are striking. Last week the average ambulance time to get to a Cat A call was approximately 20mins. If you're having a heart attack or in cardiac arrest, 20 mins is basically already minimising your survival chances. I'm not sure why some posters think these emergencies are somehow more deserving than say anaphylaxis or acute asthma attacks or extreme trauma.

To suggest that paramedics earn 47k is simply ignorant. The average paramedic earns band 6, while the rest of the ambulance service staff (technicians, ECAs etc) are often on considerably less. Band 3 is barely a living wage.

My DH has sometimes been on shift for 16+ hours. He's delivered babies on the side of the road and given CPR to children. I once had to wash someone's brains out of his uniform after an RTC ffs.

Everyone complains about the cost of lives. So how much are these lives actually worth? Because I personally think lives are worth more than the mythical 47k we currently pay ambulance staff.