The NHS is a prime example of what happens when governments refuse to govern or indeed make any decision. Now the government is attacking the very people struggling to keep providing care in a mess of its own making…
Media descriptions of “health heroes” often stops at doctors and nurses. At the front of the front line, though, are the ambulance services.
14 April 2020
London’s ambulance service has been under heavy strain. But it has not buckled. Key to its resilience has been the acceptance of responsibility by the main trade union, Unison.
10 December: London ambulance staff, members of Unison, present a petition to the Department of Health and Social Care calling for a lowering of the retirement age from 67 to 60 – the age at which other emergency services staff retire.
9 June 2017
Ambulance employers have given way and agreed to the unions’ demand that paramedics be upgraded. It’s the result of a two-year national negotiation – and decades of organisation.
5 May 2016
Ambulance service workers are to be balloted this month on their attitude to a possible national ambulance strike over pay.
Patients relying on Sussex ambulances for transport to and from appointments have been left stranded after the contract went to a private company.
In November the Care Quality Commission gave the London Ambulance Service its lowest rating. What’s going on? And what is the way forward?
From a Unison Branch Secretary letter in 2014: “The trickle of staff leaving that we saw nine months or so ago has developed into a tidal wave. A tidal wave that, if not stopped, will take our Service down.
The first strikes in the NHS for 32 years on 13 October – especially in the London Ambulance Service – gave the lie to the idea that workers are weak and that unions don’t matter.
