I am very pleased to welcome you to this 15th Annual General Meeting. I hope you enjoy the meeting and the evening. Although we like to keep these meetings friendly and relaxed there is however, formal business that we must attend to.
Throughout our sixteen years as a unified London Ambulance UNISON Branch we have become stronger, larger and more influential both within the LAS and outside.
We know that we face a difficult future but I believe our Branch, our Representatives and our Branch Officers are strong enough, organised enough and disciplined enough to see our members through.
You will see from the Branch Officer Reports that a lot is going on within the Service to protect our members’ interests and also to be there to support them when they need us.
We have once again been pro-active with our Lawyers (Thompsons) to gain £272,703.20 in compensation for our members injured at work this year. That brings the total since 1999 to £1,830,831.81
One million, eight hundred and thirty thousand, eight hundred and thirty one pounds-81p!
Our representatives are involved at workplace, area, sector and pan-London level meetings representing our members as well as the wider London and National Union commitments.
I wish to thank our Stewards, Health & Safety Representatives, Senior Representatives, Branch Officers and members for all the support and hard work.
Our Branch is a stable branch, built up over many years with experienced people dedicated to leading it through the good and bad times.
We are facing a bad time now! Spending cuts, Health & Social Care Bill, Pensions etc.
It is a fact that ambulance staff throughout the UK, no matter what Service they work for, face the same day to day issues. We could all write each others agendas for each others union representatives as they meet management and will not be far wrong!
We face the same issues because we do the same job, face the same difficulties, struggle with the same workload and face a public expectation that is rising sky high, year in and year out.
These important and serious day to day issues within all Ambulance Services that UNISON stewards battle with daily, will, however, pale into insignificance when placed alongside the real battle that is coming.
Public v Private!
As private ambulance companies bide their time, build up their fleet, recruit paramedics and technicians, pay them peanuts and deprive them of Agenda for Change terms and conditions, an attack is being prepared.
As they wait for the green light from this anti-Trade Union, anti-Public Service Coalition government to cut deeper into the NHS Ambulance Service, let’s not be under any illusion that the battle will be fought on the outcome of this question:
“Who provides ambulance cover for the people of the UK: a publicly funded Ambulance Service, or the Private Sector?”
We should never lose sight of this looming battle. It is easy for all of us to take our eye off the ball as we struggle with the day to day ‘bread and butter’ issues within our own Service. If this battle is lost, there won’t be any bread, and certainly no butter!
Our Patient Transport Services are already a commodity for private profit.
Our Support Services are vulnerable, our Control Services are vulnerable, our Urgent Care Services are vulnerable and yes, the unthinkable is now thinkable, our Accident and Emergency Services are vulnerable!
When I talk about a real battle and a planned attack, I use the terminology deliberately. A war has been declared on our Public Services.
There was a motion at the last Trade Union Congress in Manchester which got to the heart of the matter as far as I was concerned. It makes a very important point about the false distinction between ‘front line’ and ‘non-front line’ jobs.
The question has got to be asked, and we within ambulance services should ask it as well (always): where does the front line end, and the non-front line begin? Put another way: how far back does the front line go, and how far forward does the non-front line extend?
We are all frontline!
Everybody, in every ambulance service, in every health trust, whatever job or grade, is important in delivering patient care. Their job counts!
We also have to dispel the myth created by the Coalition government that our country’s economic problems are the fault of the public services and public service staff. We are all being lined up as scapegoats as the real culprits: the banks, the speculators, the privateers and the opportunists are rubbing their hands with glee as they urge the government on.
The government does not have a mandate to do this. These are our public services, our welfare state.
The Chancellor’s Comprehensive Spending Review and the Coalition White Paper on the future of the Health Service (now the Health & Social Care Bill) are like a pincer movement. On the one hand millions upon millions of pounds are taken out of the Welfare State and Public Services. On the other, and at the same time, the NHS is being fragmented, broken up, demolished and sold off to the highest bidder.
The Spending Review and the Health & Social Care Bill are vicious in their own right to working people, but together, they will form a social tsunami of hard-line, heartless ideological savagery on our public services.
This pincer movement is creating a tension that is in the air. We know something is coming but it has not reached us yet. We can hear the distant thunder, see the dark clouds, feel the cold air!
Ambulance Services are not immune to all this. We are in a better position than most health trusts because of the work done by the union and our Branch since the Ambulance Dispute (1989/90) but, let’s not bury our heads in the sand, we will be called to defend our Service, to defend the NHS, to defend the public sector.
Stand by your union through these difficult times. Our union is the only organisation to defend us at work. We are stronger together.
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If you are reading this, work for the London Ambulance Service or are eligible to join, and are not yet a member of UNISON Join Today!
 I Am Frontline You Are Frontline We Are All Frontline
We are stronger together.
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Eric Roberts
Branch Secretary
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