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 it's the fault of strikers today that people will die due to understaffing, whose fault is it the rest of the time that people are dying due to NHS understaffing?

Extraordinary that people could have looked at the news stories over the last year of elderly people lying in gardens waiting for ambulances and concluded that the solution was to give NHS workers a pay cut.

I was thinking earlier about women in labour. Presumably home births are now being discouraged as must be dangerous if they can not get an ambulance if anything goes wrong, does anyone know?

YABU. If the NHS collapses from mismanagement and loss of staff then a lot more people will die. My DS would have probably died already without the NHS. Of course I am hoping we stay well through the strikes, but even if we don't it is this government who I will blame. Pretending that they can't negotiate on pay as if they haven't ignored recommendations on pay before!

Patronising crap. Paramedics aren't asking for 19% but it wouldn't be unreasonable given how far they have fallen behind

So they do want 19% then?? Which is it? I can assure you that kind of casino money will not be forthcoming.

CEOs of FTSE 100 companies have had 20%+

Not when they are leaving customers to die and providing a crap service - typically when times are good and they get a profit share from a wealth generating company. They get potted when they’re not. And there are 1 million NHS employees and substantially fewer CEO’s, none of whom a paid by the taxpayer. Stupid comparison.

How can people be happy to be used as leverage?

What about your dc

Tories get angry when there is a hint that their manipulation and control of the system- to their benefit and to the detriment of the working and lower middle classes- might be being effectively challenged.

I am shocked and angry with the government who continue to ignore the mess they have made. They need to get round the table with the unions and end these disputes. It is completely unacceptable to run our public services on this way. Pre strikes it has become common knowledge that our ambulance service can no longer be guaranteed to attend. Old people with broken hips are lying on their own urine in agony for 23 hours. How is this acceptable?

YABU - I’m sure someone has said it already but yes it’s about pay 100% better pay equals better staff retention which equals a less stretched ambulance/nurse service. More staff retention equals a happier workforce and a better service for us. If someone dies it’s not on them it’s on the government they can find money to give themselves pay rises (don’t forget how much they also expense which we don’t see! So easily they must add on a good £10-20k on their salaries) but they can magic that out of thin air. They can pay management over inflated salaries but the front line day to day staff there is nothing available it’s total BS

You sound absolutely deranged. Comparing trade unionism to paedophilia? Get a fucking grip.

Yabu. If a job is vital to society then it should be paid accordingly then people would want to do it.

As has been explained to you multiple times, the ambulance service struggle to respond to these in a timely way even on a non-strike day. So it makes little difference whether or not they included response to category two calls in the strike terms conditions, they won’t be able to get ambulances out to these types of calls anyway. I guess they could pretend that they would, but what would be the point in that?

And as for the week before Christmas/winter being particularly bad time to strike, I can tell you now that that is rubbish. Yes, we used to consider the winter more challenging, but in recent years, it is a year-round fire storm. There are no buffer months during the summer for staff to breathe, recover and get ready for another rush. It’s relentless year round. There is no better or worse time to strike, either for the unions, or for the general public.

Yes its disgraceful. Its disgraceful the Government have forced people to strike for fair wages. Its a horrifically stressful job. Why are you angry at the people being paid shit wages to literally save lives, rather than the people who pay them?

I'm not 100% up on it but I think the fact the ambulance service is not classed as an emergency service affects the funding too
It was reclassified as an essential service not emergency

These calls are already going unanswered. There is not enough resources, people are quitting in droves, and the wages don't stand up to the level,of responsibility. Everyone is up for some clapping, but you are already being impacted by a seriously under resourced health care system. This is just highlighting it, and hoping for some action towards it

Exactly. In the long term more people will suffer and die if nothing changes. The numbers are already escalating month on month, year on year.
This way will improve things. Long term.

To my mind he is the UK's answer to Putin now, and you guys are all supporting his deadly mission to throttle the public into agreeing to a 19% pay rise by using dead and dying patients as a bargaining chip????

The your mind must be very confused.

All mothers expecting to have home births have been cancelled, confirmed today.

God help any poor mother going into spontaneous labour or delivering very early. They are going to be fucked. This is really so bad and so dangerous - babies could die, mothers could die today as they didn't make it onto the call out list.

But all ok for the Tories to use sick patients as leverage to get what they want.

As repeatedly said, no one was posting about patient deaths pre strikes, despite running at 200 a week.

Royal College of Emergency Medicine.

I hope the health workers go on an all out indefinite strike.

I am a Paramedic in England, the feeling is that actually life threatening calls will get a better response during the strike than they do on a non-striking day since there is more chance of someone being available to attend.

The service on the average day is effectively stood down because working practices have us attending maybe 1 or 2 patients a day in an entire shift. I used to attend 9-10 in the same time!!! It is absolutely normal now for responses to cardiac arrests to be over 20minutes (we recognise that anything over 4 minutes practically eliminates any chance of the patient being well enough to leave hospital so we currently attend to go through the motions then recognise them as deceased), strokes which will only be treated in a way that might reverse the symptoms need to have it started earlier than 4.5 hours (too late after) are now routinely being attended to 4-8 hours after calling - so when they arrive at hospital too late for any treatment and they're essentially just going to see what function remains and whether they'll be well enough to go home again. Heart attacks not quite as bad, treatment really needs to be started before 12 hours so there's a bigger window which most of them make it to hospital in - but all of these patients suffer more complications and a significant reduced capacity for recovery with every delay.

There absolutely needs to be a strike because nothing else has worked and it's continuing to get worse. I absolutely would not call 999 for any of my family (bar cardiac arrest really), because for everything else making your own way will have a better outcome. If my child was having an anaphylactic reaction struggling to breath about to stop breathing needing adrenaline would have absolutely no faith that the ambulance service would arrive before they died. The service I work for in its current state is not an emergency service. I love my job, wouldn't want to do anything else

Lots if these threads popping up lately and likely government generated to try and undermine public opinion about how nasty and selfish the healthcare workers are putting the public at risk ..ignoring how they've put the public at risk for years. Laughable if it weren't so serious. Won't negotiate at all...says it all about them and how concerned they are for the public. Give taxpayers money to the bakers, the energy companies Michelle Mone and of course themselves because theyre down to their last million, struggle to pay their subsidised meals and alcohol and second homes ..didums.

I'm a student nurse. I support the strikes 100% - you have clearly NO idea of the reality of working in this profession. Maybe you should consider why inherently caring professionals feel the situation is that bad a strike is warranted. This isn't done lightly.

No option to vote, but you ABVVVVVVVVU

You’re missing the point.

They we not able to help be before anyway.

If an emergency had happened yesterday, I would not have called an ambulance, because it would have been slower than a taxi. Unless someone has already stopped breathing, the wait is several hours.

So nothing has changed for me today.

I want change for the ambulance service, so I support this action.

That is bullshit and you know it.

We have a strep A crisis.
We have a serious flu outbreak
Covid is exploding again and you think now is a great time to strike?! In the middle of the busiest time of the year.

That says just about everything about you. As a person.