The announcement by the PM of his intention to introduce laws requiring minimum service levels in key public sectors in relation to strikes has prompted the Irony Society to award him their 2023 Medal of Irony in Politics. They do not anticipate anyone else beating him throughout the year in that category. He wants minimum service levels from staff but doesn’t see the need for minimum performance levels from governments.
Rishi Sunak wants to bring in legislation that creates a legal requirement on striking unions to provide minimum service levels in their respective sectors such as hospitals, ambulance services, railways, education, fire services and nuclear commissioning. This ignores the current good will arrangements that are typically put in place to ensure that lives are not jeopardised. Ambulance workers and nurses do not put people’s lives at risk for industrial action.
The right to put people’s lives at risk is reserved for the Tory government with their complete failure to manage the NHS to deliver an effective service, inability to manage the ambulance service so there are insufficient paramedics, inability to address social care so hospital beds aren’t blocked, inability to manage the GP contracts so we have enough GPs to offer an effective service, inability to manage rail contracts.
More people are suffering and dying because of the failures of the Conservative governments over the past 12 years to deliver. There have been so many analyses of how the various services have deteriorated over the past 12 years that it
How about a minimum service level for Government delivery of effective services?
Perhaps the government should direct some of this scrutiny to its own performance. Health related unions already undertake to provide cover during strikes in the event of acute emergencies. They do this because they actually care about their work and are commited.
Why can’t ambulance services recruit sufficient staff? Because the pay levels, especially during the early training years is so low.
Why are there insufficient GPs? Because the government GP contract acts as a disincentive to GPs.
Why can’t some of the rail companies recuit sufficient drivers? Because the pay is so poor.
It is all very predictable. Twelve years of grinding now the public sector while more money gets diverted to the growing number of billionaires and spaffing money away has left working people immune to Conservative posturing. The money is there if they choose to consider salaries a priority.