Ambulance staff strike

Ambulance drivers and paramedics received toots of support from the passing public on their picket line today as they joined the nurses on strike. 

One striker said two more ambulance incident teams were currently on stand by for different categories of incidents.  

In what is the biggest strike in the history of the NHS Loughborough ambulance staff from the GMB union joined nurses from the Royal College of Nursing and 3,000 other paramedics, emergency care assistants, call handlers taking industrial action across the Midlands. 

The call for action involved more than 9,000 staff on 100 GMB picket lines throughout the country on strike over a pay offer of four per cent from the government. 

One of the GMB’s issues with the government is it’s attempt to smear them over the life and limb coverage provided over the strike days. 

The Loughborough picket line received support from the adjacent fire station workers with the main picket in Leicestershire at Gorse Hill ambulance station on Anstey Lane, Leicester with others at Goodwood, Hinckley, Oakham and Narborough.  

Qualified paramedic and GMB East Midlands’s branch secretary Mark Dawn said in 34 years he’s never known anything like it.

“We are here today because the service is struggling with staff retention, struggling over pay and morale. The whole NHS is broken and if the government would listen to us for long enough to let us fix it we could,” said Mr Dawn.

“In the 1980s night times were quiet, now it’s a 24 hour service. We’re constantly waiting to get patients in, waiting for hours and hours, ambulances queuing, patients waiting with patients dying in car parks.”

He said the government says we must work under minimum service levels but that they’re out of touch.

“I’m not sure they understand where we are today,” he said.

“People are breaking down, concerned about the future,” he added.

Director of operations at EMAS Ben Holdaway said they will continue to carefully assess and prioritise an ambulance response for those who need it most. 

“It’s important the public use services wisely and make their own way to a treatment centre or hospital if safe to do so,” said   

Secretary of State for Health Steve Barclay said that pay talks continue with health unions and that the PRB (pay review body) process is the route to follow. 

But the union says the government missed the deadline to submit their own evidence to the pay review body process for 2023/24. 

“We have not met the Secretary of State since the 9th January. It is not good enough,” said another GMB spokes.