It Could Happen Here - Nurses Strikes and Class War in the UK, Part 1

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

Mia talks with Nick, a resident nurse from the UK, about the events that led to the unprecedented nurses strikes sweeping through the UK.   https://action.rcn.org.uk/page/117402/donate/1?ea.tracking.id=internalSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German,

where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians,

actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Nick It Happened Here, a podcast where the thing is not, well, where here has temporarily been relocated to the UK once again. Oh, what an awful place to relocate.

Yeah, I'm your host, Mia Wong, and today with me to talk about things in the kingdom that is united for some reason is Nick, who is a resident nurse there. Nick, how are you doing i'm doing all right um a lot better for being on holiday right now yeah yeah getting getting getting to escape the the the the sort of dismal swamp of uh rainy fat rainy uh turf island yeah so on the other hand there there are things that are in motion on turf island which are interesting and cool and that is on the okay so i i have no idea once again when this is going to come out like this could be coming out like four weeks from now like there could be six more prime ministers like who knows what's going to happen um yeah i i six could be rishi's

outlasted the lettuce unlike our last one but you know sorry to anyone who's not up to british political memes that's going to be arcane and inscrutable and i'm not correcting that uh we we we we ran them through a like two-hour brit British politics boot camp a couple of weeks ago, so hopefully they still remember. Yeah, but the reason I'm saying this, so on the day we are recording, there are a bunch of strikes going on in the UK. There have been a bunch of strikes going on in the UK for a while. They keep doing this weird...

Okay, this is my... I'm going to do my one bit of what are you guys doing strategically thing, which is, okay, so they keep having these strikes, and then they'll go off strike for three weeks as a, quote, side of good faith for their negotiations, and then nothing happens, and they go back on strike, and it's like, well, okay, you could just not do this. Yeah, so strikes have been continuing,

and yeah, I wanted to talk to you about some of the nurses strikes that's been happening and about the sort of organizing that's been going on because that's what's been really cool and not reported on enough i guess the the place that i want to start with this is with the last sort of deck well i mean i guess there's been a lot of austerity in the uk but i want to kind of start with the last sort of decade of austerity and the damage that's been doing to the healthcare system and what that's looked like on your end. So, there's a couple of ways it's manifest. One is like there's been a centralization of healthcare services, a closing down of hospitals and making larger hospitals that contain more and more specialties. So for instance, my hospital that I work in,

as a result, came about closing down about, I think, three smaller hospitals. Jeez. And each hospital that was lost, we lost about at least 100 beds for each one that was created, that centralised into R1. There's been massive cut back in like and lack of funding in preventive health care and community health care one interesting example of how that manifests is like they shifted their provision of community health care and social care for new mothers to being run by the local council that's like local either county or city even larger

cities level government and then they would put out the process where rather than just it goes automatically to the nhs it needs to be put out to tender and give like charities or non-profits or even private health care providers an opportunity to bid on providing the service that's and now that's a terrible way to run this system oh no it's absolutely insane it's absolutely insane and what this and then the end result of this is the nhs service gets it because they're the only one that can actually credit credibly provide the service, but they have to essentially massively underestimate how much it will cost to run it or to run the service. Oh, because they have to underbid the other services

that are not going to do that. Wow, that is a terribly designed system. Yeah, and then there's also the introduction of trying to, in order to cut back on the backlogs that the cutting down on services have created via outsourcing some surgeries and stuff to private healthcare, to private hospitals, but then they're able to just pick and choose the easiest,

least risky and most profitable ones. And of course, any complications that result of the problems with surgery, issues with treatment, adverse reactions, the surgeons fucking it up because they were working overnight in order to get some extra money after doing a shift in the NHS hospital, which is often the case, then falls back on the nhs proper and then in terms of workforce the average on average this isn't just nurses there's a universal pay scale used in the nhs for everyone called agenda for change there's a history prime that confusing name but yeah the reason for that is it was a very much

it was a less unified system before like the early 2000s everyone knew it was messed up there was a big like push by unions and also by government who wanted to rationalize the whole thing to make it make more sense in theory tie people's wage to what they were actually doing more directly in a more consistent way, hence Agenda for Change, because we're an agenda for changing up what's happening. But it's been in place for over 20 years now, so the name doesn't make sense. But basically, everyone on Agenda for Change has, on average, in the last 10 years, had a 20% pay cut in real terms. Then doctors and dentists, because they're special boys,

And doctors and dentists, because they're special boys, love them, but, you know, have on a different pay scale. And junior doctors, on average, have had an even worse pay cut of about 28%. Yeah, they're on strike. They're on strike, like, right now. Yeah, they're on strike right now. And unlike my union, they haven't pissed about the government. They've gone straight to a full three days. out the government they've gone straight to a full three days no derogations the term for agreeing to not provide services for life in order to protect patient safety which the rcn went in for in a big way in some ways they've got it a bit easier and that they can just say oh the consultants will do

all of this like that is to use to translate into america American healthcare, that would be an attending. And so this strike of junior doctors includes everyone from like their first two years post-medical school, what we call foundation years. Possibly that'd be equivalent to internship in America. And then our registrars, so people who are registered into specialty training, equivalent of like a resident, I believe. The government tried to persuade them to call it off in order to go into talks, but they hadn't made a big show and promise of like, we will, in good faith, we will call off strikes

and go into negotiations if the government agrees to have serious formal talks. So they were able to just say to the government, no, you're putting too many preconditions on these talks. We're not doing it until you make, until you stop messing us about. Whereas unfortunately my union, the RCN is addicted to protecting the image of nursing and like acting in good

faith, even when they're dealing with someone who have no intention of dealing in good faith. Yeah. Which, which, yeah, that, that, that that i don't

know as a strategy it's really frustrating because you just can get and like you can just get locked in endless negotiations which is yeah nothing is happening and yeah it's really frustrating Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. To provide some historical context to this, the RCN in England, Wales, and Scotland, Northern Ireland's a slightly different story, had never had a strike until last year historically the rcn was an anti-strike union wait that what yeah yes that's a thing in the uk man like i i know i know like the us has a lot of weird not very good unions but like i don't know i'm not sure i've ever heard of you really that's yes wow so that changed either in the 90s or the early 2000s. I honestly can't remember when. I tried to look it up, but whenever you're trying to search this stuff,

just your search results are like flooded by stuff around the latest round. What you've got to understand is the RCN is 106 years old. It only became a union though, about 50 years ago. So the RCN is both a union and a professional body in that it also does stuff around developing nursing best practice,

research, and that kind of thing. And that's what it existed as originally. So yeah, so like a professional association. Yeah, exactly. And so it still has a dual structure of its union side, its professional body side that develops nursing practice and stuff like that.

Yeah, well, I guess that raises the sort of question of what was so unbelievably like, what happened such that for the first time in like 100 and whatever years they finally went on strike so it's partially a matter of breaking points the nursing turnover in the uk is absolute dog shit um thousands of people leave the profession every year there's this massive pay cut that's happened over the last 10 years. And nursing was always underpaid in the UK to be frank. There's also, then there was the cut in the nursing bursary about five years ago.

So it used to be the government would pay you to train as a nurse. It would also give you not enough, not like enough to be equivalent of the wage of the work you were doing. Nursing in the UK has a far higher amount of practice hours than it does in the US, I believe, as part of the degree. And like a lot of that time, you're essentially working as a HCA or a CNA, as you'd say in America. Can you explain what that is for uh people who don't know like medical stuff so uh hey ta healthcare assistant or uh what was it cna uh certified nursing assistant i think

what stands for is essentially a healthcare worker who does a rate a range of what you'd describe as nursing tasks, but not the role of a registered nurse. So they would assist with mobilising patients, monitoring observations, hygiene, potentially taking bloods and some investigations such as setting up an ECG, but they wouldn't do more advanced investigations, risk management, care planning, medication management, assessing of patients and that kind of stuff.

So, yeah, like about five years ago, the nursing bursary was cut. So then it became, as with every other degree, having to take out a student loan in order to pursue it. And then in 2018, there was a particularly disastrous pay deal where the RCN, in a number of ways, just absolutely fumbled. Not just the RCN, the other healthcare unions representing healthcare workers also messed up hugely. But they really fumbled the ball. It resulted, arguably, some people describe it as the leadership selling out the membership. resulted arguably some people describe it as the the leadership selling out the membership and then after that there was a general an emergency general meeting called the rcn which resulted in the entire executive being booted wow um around this leading up to that there'd been like increasing like grassroots militancy around nurses,

recognizing that this was an awful situation we were in. This also then resulted in, like there were various grassroots campaigns started, such as like Nurses United UK, which started employing, organizing the UK to like, agitate nurses. There was a concerted effort to put pressure on the RCN by, I'd say, a radical minority, but one that represented a genuine

feeling among nurses on the front line to push for the RCN to take a more radical stance. Then, at the same time, I don't know if this was covered in your talk about English politics, your two-hour deep dive, but Northern Ireland didn't have a government at this point, because as they are now, the DUP and Sinn Féin had fallen out.

And legally, it has to be both of them together as the largest republican and largest unionist party unionists in pro the united kingdom party after former government which meant it was impossible legally for any to have any pay rise in the nhs in northern ireland at that time there was not a government that could legally enact one great amazing and this was and this resulted in the in 2019 the first strikes by the rcn ever and also like the first nursing strikes in the nhs in a very long time i might be wrong about this i think the last ones were like in the 80s or the 70s i might i might be wrong about this though and this was both called by the rcn and one of the other biggest trade unions in the probably the biggest trade union as it's a

generalist trade union in the nhs unison they both called strikes at this time and they were a significant factor in getting the northern ireland government back meeting alongside other things i'm not going to give ourselves all the credit, but it was a significant factor that often gets overlooked and actually having any pay rise enacted at all on the, in Northern Ireland. Just to clarify for a second, this,

this strike was a specifically like a strike that was happening for nurses in Northern Ireland. Yeah. In 2019, I think it's very important. I think that triggered something of a sea, sea change in the RCN. And that was kind of the culminating point of like trying to push for a more

militant attitude on the RCN. And it really like broke the fog gates open and made what's happening now possible. Even though a lot of nurses in England, particularly, I can't comment on the situation in Wales and Northern Ireland, like how much people know about what was going on but like a lot of nurses in England

didn't even know about it and when I was going around the wards pushing for people to vote in favour of the strike action a lot of people didn't weren't aware that that had been a thing that had happened until I told them about it because people in England as much as England is determined

to keep Northern Ireland, don't know what's going on in Northern Ireland to any degree. To a terrifying degree sometimes, I would say. Yeah, that sounds like a thing that happens when you're a colonial power, et cetera, et cetera. Well, yes. I mean, I feel like, well, our equivalent isn't the right term

but like around the same time like people in puerto rico like ran out their government and almost no one in the u.s like like in the continental u.s has like ever heard of it so yeah yeah i would say if that yeah if there's not bombs going off in Northern Ireland, people in England aren't paying attention, I would say. Yeah, that makes sense, and it's also really depressing. Yeah, I would say Northern Ireland, maybe in some ways in the better position than Puerto Rico, in that it actually has a degree of political representation

in the main, in the Westminster and such, even though it obviously should have its independence i might but yeah uh puerto rico doesn't even have that is my understanding yeah and i mean there's a whole there's a there's a whole thing there like the puerto rican statehood people are like weird reactionaries the independence people are cooler but also there's this whole sort of i don't know there's there's a kind of like there's a kind of paralysis anywhere it's like that and it it's like dc is kind of similar where there's this whole sort of there's this kind of

paralysis where like nothing's ever going to be done about it other than the u.s just like basically imposing whatever random colonial governor that they've decided to bring in as an emergency manager or whatever yeah sorry okay but we are getting we are getting far afield from I want to stop before I put my foot in it and say something about Northern Ireland that will piss off everyone

yeah and like I don't even know even less about what's going about Puerto Rico more than the average person in Britain but yeah I would also say And like, I don't even know even less about Puerto Rico. Yeah. More than the average person in Britain. But yeah, I would also say, okay, like, so, so, so people don't get mad at me.

The, like all of the U S is a colony. It's the, like the, the, the, the, the, the substantive difference between New York and Hawaii and Puerto Rico was when, like when, when we took it over. But yeah. Yeah. Okay. So return, return to're returning we're turning actually well you know okay all right i will i will take this complete interruption of the flow as a point to do an ad break so uh do you know what else is an extensive colonial power that uh who's might cannot be checked it's it's the products and services that support this podcast. Yay. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Son enter. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations

with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists

to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love.

Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el te caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart Podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

All right. And we are back. Yeah. So I wanted to move from the Northern Ireland strikes to talk about the sort of broader strikes that have been happening in the last, like my understanding about year or so. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Is it, is it, is it going to go longer than that? Yeah. I guess we should talk about like, yes. Like what,

what, what happens to move from the Northern ireland strikes to the current situation so do you mean with specifically nhs strikes or like a broader strike wave that's going on in the uk specifically with the nhs strikes but i guess we can talk about the broader wave if you want to too okay um so So obviously all the shit with COVID happened. Yeah. And then we came to the payoff of last year. And at this point, there'd been general building of an attitude that we don't just need a decent pay rise that keeps up with inflation. We need one that goes towards restoring lost pay.

and the rcn leadership after the kicking out of the entire executive in 2018 kind of on the back foot kind of like wanting to appease the membership go along with it a bit more also we had new general secretary pat cullen who was the secretary of the Northern Ireland section of the RCN during the Northern Ireland strikes, took a more militant position in the joint union pay negotiations with the government towards the beginning of last year,

where the RCN took a position of, we need inflation plus 5%. Now, this is a position of we need inflation plus five percent now this is a bit of inside baseball which like i don't think i've ever seen like put out officially but what i know from various people involved in these things and like statements by different unions what my understanding of it is the biggest of the trade unions in the nhs in general the unison put forward line it only it was only willing to go for a generic significantly better than inflation pay ballot or like pay demand from

the government which the rcn was due to like changing attitude of its membership what happened when it accepted a bad deal last time was not willing to go for and and resulted the rcn splitting from the joint union like pay council like the joint union council over this issue which then the offer k the government's pay thing came in it said we will do a flat 1,400 for everyone, like on all bands, so not percentage like it normally does. And, you know, to be honest, if it was a significantly higher amount that was bigger than inflation for the lower bands, like the lower paid workers in the NHS, wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. But this 1,400 isn't good enough for anyone.

And while I'm talking about this, I'm talking about specifically in England. It was slightly different in Wales and Scotland. I think generally slightly better, but still far lower than it should have been, than it needs to be. And so the RCN was the first of the unions in the NHS to say it was doing a pay ballot. any unions in the nhs to say it was balloting it was doing a pay ballot um and this kind of sprung on the other unions like a week two weeks three weeks later all said that they were doing it as well the rcn also at the same time hired a load of organized like paid organizers to support the pay ballot effort and what i'll say is obviously paid

organizers they're no substitute for what rank and file militancy but it was very helpful to be honest because i think there was a lot of like militant sentiment in the rcn but although there were some like rank and file initiatives which had a massive impact on like pushing the RCN to a stronger position. I don't, I don't think that could have materialized. And there wasn't enough people like actually who had an idea about organizing about what it meant to go out and push for this kind of thing to get what we needed in that timeframe.

Sadly, I wish that wasn't the case, but I do think these paid organizers much is not what i think the correct model for workplace organizing is did help a lot and this then resulted in the rcn strike ballot passing in 176 nhs trusts across the uk let me just um yeah check that I've got that right. Yeah. Which is huge. It's not all, but it is, it's over 50%. It's pretty much all trusts in Scotland, all trusts in Scotland, all trusts in Northern Ireland, I think all bar one or two in Wales and the majority in England.

It's also worth pointing out the ones that didn't pass it, they didn't pass by less than a percentage. Wow. They didn't pass by like 10 votes in all cases. I think the one in Wales that didn didn't pass it was literally by three votes and it's also worth knowing that i think in 2016 or 2015 anti-union legislation was passed by the conservative government which raised the bar you need in order to have to have legal strike industrial action and under the law as it existed a decade ago every nhs trust that the rcm

balloted in would have passed the ballot also unfortunate timing it was happening at the same time as the post as postal strikes were happening and in in the UK, industrial ballots for industrial actions to be legal have to happen by post. A little bit of sad irony there. It's like, it's bad timing, guys. Yeah. Full power to you. You're getting fucked.

Like, oh God, I wish the timing had been slightly slightly different yeah yeah and of all the of all the trust of all the unions in the in the nhs that were passing ballots the rcm was the most successful we we passed it in significantly more places than other unions did um to my shock to be honest because like when I was going around balloting or like talking to people like on my days off, like going around the wards, talking to people while I was at work,

everyone was like, yes, it was in other unions, like, yes, I'm voting for it. I'm waiting on 10 to Hicks to have my ballot. When's my ballot arriving? Why has my union not opened their ballot yet? And so like, when particularly like other unions didn't pass in my trust,

I was really shocked. I was really confused. And it seems like a lot of them didn't actually want to fight to a degree in that like they were opening it because the RCN had opened it. I'm certain people in those unions

might disagree with me, but that's really, I find it really hard to understand how these unions that have historically, they're all not that militant, you know, but they all have a history of strikes in other sectors, of organising for this, they've never had been anti-strike

unions, UNICEF in particular. It was the, came about like several unions being collaborated, like joining together including unions that had been founded by nurses in the 70s in reaction to like the rcn being anti-strike and going on like that was the last big wave of nursing strikes at that time so that really shocked me this has been it It Could Happen Here. Join us tomorrow for part two of the interview. And in the meantime, you can find us on Twitter and Instagram

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You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on

for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral.

We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and a sazón that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.