As we all enjoy the Olympics let us not forget that the Coalition Government is still beavering away in the background destroying Public Services and the Welfare State.
As Team GB go from strength to strength, medal to medal, podium to podium, it is easy for us all to forget that there is a real world still outside Strafford Olympic Park.
A real world where the Coalition Government, under cover of the Olympic feel good factor, are still hell-bent on pushing through their divisive, anti National Health Service policies.
The Olympics last for a month: the destruction of the National Health Service will last forever!
Not content with trying to sell off the NHS to their corporate friends they also want to weaken the Terms and Conditions of staff.
Agenda for Change has been with us for only eight years and already it is under threat. Ambulance Staff (with the exception of a minority who are still not getting what they deserve), for the first time ever, paid equal pay for work of equal value.
No one can seriously argue that pay (freezes notwithstanding) has not increased under Agenda for Change.
That will go if the Coalition gets its way.Â
It is precisely because Agenda for Change has been such a successful National Agreement for Health Workers in general, and, Ambulance Staff in particular, that the Tories, with shameful support from the Liberal Democrats, want to destroy it.
Already, Health Trusts on the South Coast are threatening to rip up the National Agreement and revert to local pay. If they get away with it others will also try.
This is a real threat to all of us.
Be ready to defend your National Terms and Conditions when your Union calls on you.
So, enjoy the Olympics along with the rest of our Country as I am doing, but, don’t be lulled into a false world.
Don’t fall asleep at the podium.
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All reports are that the Ambulance Staff brought in from other Ambulance Services across the Country to help at London 2012 are really enjoying being in London. They are helping London Ambulance Service deal with the Olympics and ‘business as normal’.
We should offer them jobs here.
They are proof, if proof is needed, that it is wrong, dangerous and misguided, to cut jobs within the LAS.
Turning to the private sector for help will do nothing. Nothing that is, except make the private sector stronger, and the public sector weaker.
UNISON has been saying this for a long time. We just need someone from the Service to say the same thing.
I really do understand the reluctance to put heads above the parapet, particularly at a time when the Coalition uses Health Service Senior Management as scapegoats for its own failures.
However, there is one person who has nothing to lose now by speaking out, and, everything to gain!
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UNISON opposes private companies making profit out of health. The profit motive, when under pressure, will always outweigh the care motive.
Within Ambulance Services private companies should be the exception and not the rule. Brought in when a fully funded, fully staffed Service is under pressure.
Unfortunately, private companies are increasingly becoming the rule, and not the exception.
Let me be clear. We are not against private company staff.
People have to work, earn money and make a living. We understand that of course, and, indeed, urge them to join the Union so that together we can get rid of ‘minimum wage – maximum profit’ firms who not only exploit the Health Service but exploit their own staff.
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Information of all issues can be found elsewhere on our website.
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We are stronger together.
Eric Roberts
Branch Secretary.
