'We want to do our jobs but change is needed' – Black Country ambulance workers speak out amid strike action

Those are the emotive words of an ambulance worker who laid bare his reasons for striking alongside his colleagues in a national walk out.

Members of GMB and Unite joined forces to hold a day of strike action yesterday, which saw thousands of Midlands-based ambulance care staff join more than 10,000 national workers in a walk out over pay disputes and ambulance wait times.

Darren Westwood, aged 56, of Dudley, said: “It’s becoming very hard for us to keep new staff in for longer than five years, some don’t even last that long. It’s just not what they think it is going to be, they think they are going to help people but they just end up being stuck in waiting bays.”

The clinical team mentor talked about the way that underfunding in hospitals directly relates to longer ambulance wait times.

He said: “All of these issues are because the hospital is backed up, there is nowhere to put the elderly into social care, that then leads to the wards being full and the wards being full backs up to the ambulances, before long you have people dying because of that.”

Mr Westwood talked about his 18 years of experience working for the NHS, and the problems he faces. He said: “I have looked at leaving before, several times – but this is a life calling, it is a passion, we are all only here to serve.”

“The West Midlands Ambulance Service is one of the the best employers I have ever worked for. I’ve been here for 18 years, this isn’t the ambulance service’s fault, it’s not the hospitals’ fault, it’s the underfunding.”

The action comes after more than 1,700 additional hours were spent in ambulances due to handover times at hospitals in the Black Country in the week leading up to December 11.

At a Dudley ambulance station, on Burton Road, strikers lined both sides of the street waving flags of their respective unions, requesting that the government meet them at the table to discuss the future of the service.

Sally Husselbee, emergency medical technician at the Dudley Hub and a GMB rep talked about what she wants from the day of action, she said: “From a personal point of view, pay. I have been in the service for over 20 years, our pay conditions have not changed dramatically, especially in the last 10 to 12 years, A real result would be any situation where we are matching the current cost of living.

“But this has never been just about pay, it’s about the long patient waiting times and the stresses that the staff face every day, it’s frustrating, we get the calls, but we are stuck at the hubs, and when we do have a chance to respond, but it’s never fast enough.”

A report released by the GMB union reported that since 2018 over 1,000 staff members have left the ambulance service to find better rates of pay and conditions in different sectors.

Ms Husselbee continued: “This used to be a career for life, but staff are burning out.

“The stresses and the shift work just aren’t worth the pay, they aren’t retaining the older staff and you are losing the experience.

“We have a lot of younger, less experienced staff who have started the job who are also getting burnt out, and now they just don’t want to stay in the job, it used to be a career for life, but now it lasts around five years, if that.” The second day of strike action has been organised for just after Christmas, where they warned would-be festive revellers to take extra care.

Jason Kirkham, a paramedic and Unite rep at Dudley Hub, talked about what he wants from the strikes.

He said: “Pay needs to be discussed, how are we supposed to retain decent staff members with non-competitive pay?

“I have seen a lot of staff leave to go and get jobs in GP practices and private care all because the pay is better and the hours are better, we need to be keeping these staff here by offering competitive pay. We also currently have ambulances parking up in A&E bays because the hospitals don’t have the capacity to offload – that isn’t the fault of the NHS or the hospitals, it’s an underfunding issue.

“What we really want is for the government to come and talk to us, to sit down with us, discus these issues and eventually to make a real plan to try to save the NHS, that is the real starting point for our future.”

Health secretary Steve Barclay recently accused the unions of making a “conscious decision” to “inflict harm” on patients due to the strikes.

Ms Husselbee thinks this isn’t the case, she said: “We still care, but we need to take a stand, the public fully supports, what has been great here is the amount of public support that we have received, the public is behind us.”

The strikes form the first phase of the national action for reforms, where more walk-outs will be planned in the new year if meetings are not held between the two parties.

The second round of strikes has been organised following Christmas, where ambulance staff have again warned the public “don’t drink, don’t drive, and don’t take risks.”

A second day of action will spell more issues for non-emergency assistance, where only the most serious of calls will be attended in the lead up to new years.

The next walk-out action will take place on Wednesday, December 28, where senior union members will again take to the picket lines in the region to get government officials around the negotiating table to ‘save the NHS’.