Thousands of ambulance workers across five services in England will strike on February 10 in the long-running dispute over pay and staffing, Unison has announced. The walkout involves ambulance workers in London, Yorkshire, the South West, North East and North West.
Strikes will now be happening across the NHS every day next week apart from Wednesday. Unison urged the Government to stop “pretending the strikes will simply go away” and act decisively to end the dispute by improving pay.
The union warned that unless the Government has a “major rethink” over NHS pay, and gets involved in “actual talks” with unions, it will announce strike dates running into March. By then, the dispute is likely to affect double the number of trusts and extend to the whole of the ambulance service in England, said the union.
Unison’s head of health Sara Gorton said: “After promising everyone a quicker pay review body process, the secretary of state’s own department failed to get its evidence in on time earlier this month. Ministers must stop fobbing the public off with promises of a better NHS, while not lifting a finger to solve the staffing emergency staring them in the face.
“The Government must stop playing games. Rishi Sunak wants the public to believe ministers are doing all they can to resolve the dispute. They’re not.
“There are no pay talks, and the Prime Minister must stop trying to hoodwink the public. It’s time for some honesty. Ministers are doing precisely nothing to end the dispute.
“The Government’s tactics seem to be to dig in, wait months for the pay review body report and hope the dispute goes away. It won’t. And in the meantime, staff will carry on quitting, and patients being let down.
“There can be no health service without the staff to run it. Ministers must open proper talks to end the dispute and put in place the urgent retention plan needed to boost pay and staffing across the NHS.”
