The UK's Nurses Are on Strike for Better Pay

This post originally appeared in VICE UK​

With their backs against the wall, nurses are quick to drop the bedside manner. "David Cameron is a cunt," more than one of them told me this morning. We were standing on the steps of University College Hospital (UCH) in central London, the location of an NHS workers' strike picket. Last month saw the first strike over pay by NHS workers in England for 32 years and today the struggle continued—thousands refused to go to work for four hours this morning.

In effect, the NHS workers are trying to persuade the government to cut their by pay by less than was already planned. They had been expecting a 1 percent pay rise, which would have been a pay cut when you take inflation at 1.3 percent into account. But the government thought even this was largesse and would risk 10,000 frontline jobs, which they say would become unaffordable. So today, nurses, radiographers, midwives, cleaners, and psychiatrists all walked off the job, possibly affecting outpatient appointments as well as some routine surgery.

They were hoping the second four-hour stoppage will help encourage the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to make more money available for workers who claim their pay has fallen by 15 percent in real terms over the last five years.

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Back in trade unionism's heyday, picket lines were the front lines of a strike, where those who had downed tools—"pickets"—would physically block their workplaces to stop the "scabs" who went in to work in defiance of the strike. There have been times when strikes have got pretty gnarly. The  Homest​ead strike in the US in 1892 culminated in a battle between striking workers and private security agents, leaving 12 dead and another two dozen wounded. In the UK, the 1984-85 miners' strike regularly saw outbreaks of violence between the police and strikers, and the Wapping​ dispute in 1986 saw mount​ed police being used against rioting pickets.

These days, people are way more likely to throw a sickie than go on strike. There were only 443,600 working days lost in the UK last year, well down from the more than 29 million lost in 1979. Union membership in the UK is low, and breaking a strike isn't seen as a particularly big deal anymore. Today's picket lines tend to involve people standing around handing out leaflets and imploring people not to go into work.

It was relatively quiet and bitterly cold when I arrived outside the hospital on Euston Road shortly after 7 AM. It had been dark when I'd left my flat but the sun was starting to come up. There were less than a dozen people standing around, handing out fluorescent bibs and signs saying "official picket" had already been stuck to walls and pillars. Leaflets were being dished out and some socialist paper sellers were standing around, selling socialist papers.

Pickets were still arriving as the morning shift started to show up. "This is the best bit, seeing everybody you know scab on you," said my friend Jason, a striking nurse and the guy who took the photos for this article.

Colleagues' names were called as they entered the workplace in a last ditch attempt to get them to join the picket line, or guilt trip them for not joining. This was made more complicated because people were trying to work out which of their mates were on strike and which weren't. Out of 15 unions representing a balkanized health work force, 11 were taking action today. Then there's the fact that unions can be a bit bureaucratic and ineffectual at talking to their members—one Unite member I spoke to wasn't even aware there was a strike on.

Union application forms were at the ready because workers can join the up on the picket line, meaning they can join the strike at the last minute without breaking the law. A lot of people expressed support but went in to work anyway. Some people scuttled past doing their best to ignore the strikers. It felt a bit like being next to a particularly large group of chuggers on a high street.

At the peak of the strike there were around 100 workers on picket lines around the hospital. Nevertheless the place was still operating. Since people don't stop being sick when health workers down tools, so unions make sure they organise so that care isn't compromised too much. Obviously this undermines the effectiveness strike somewhat, but means that people don't die because of it, which is probably for the best.

A bit before 8 AM, UNISON's Head of Health, Christina McAnea, made the short walk from the union headquarters to give strikers a pep talk and help distribute leaflets and the picket got its first supportive car honk of the day. "Up the workers, up the NHS, fuck the Tories," shouted a random passer-by while clapping. I took this to mean that people like hospitals more than politicians. Things were looking up. The assembled workers started to chant, "1 percent, we say no, David Cameron's got to go!"

Radiographers are apparently fantastic at puns, as the above banner demonstrates. Members of the Society and College of Radiographers also chanted, "One, two, three, four, give us what we're asking for, five, six, seven, eight we will not irradiate."

The largest contingent on the picket was cleaners. Most took part in the strike action last month in pouring rain. I asked one called Shakil Rizvi why he was on strike. "Because we need a pay rise," he answered. In fact the next person I asked said exactly the same thing. Jeff, a nurse on the haematology, expanded a bit: "We haven't had an increase for almost five years now so we have to go on strike, the prices of commodities are going up, the rent is going up and we're not coping. It's getting tougher and tougher." NHS workers aren't the only people to be hit by a string of pay freezes and below inflation pay rises. Over the course of the morning the picket was joined by local government workers, museum workers, charity workers and lawyers, all turning up to show their and to give them cash, Jaffa Cakes and biscuits.

The most welcome visitors were the midwives who had a picket line on the other side of the large hospital building. They were on strike for the second in the history of UK midwifery (the first time being last month) and marched past with flags waving, which might have freaked out any prospective mothers rushing into the hospital, who wouldn't have been in the mood to have their labor interrupted by a labor dispute (ayooooooo!).

TV crews, journalists and press photographers all show up over the course of the morning. Workers were taking picket line selfies and appeared to be enjoying themselves, despite the cold. Deputy Sister and union rep Janet Maiden told me one of her younger colleagues had been telling her they had made friends for life in previous strikes. "For just a short period of time being on strike is very liberating," she said. "Nurses become friends with the porters and catering staff who you never knew before. It's a unity, and a family, outside the hospital taking action together and that's actually really exiting."

I guess that unity is exactly the point of trade unionism, the clue being in the title. To be honest, today's action felt a little bit tokenistic—is the government really going to change course because of four hours or protest? Still, it probably gave them pause for thought.  David Cameron is always on about "hard working families" when he makes speeches to convince people of the idea of austerity. It seems to me that to really make a difference, trade unionists need to extend their principle—of being a family, as Janet put it—to other workers who also don't want to see the NHS go down the pan.

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