By UNISON general secretary Andrea Egan
The Covid-19 public inquiry released its third report this week (18 March) on the impact of the pandemic on the UK’s healthcare systems.
In response to overwhelming evidence from UNISON and other trade unions and experts, it found that the UK’s response to the pandemic was fundamentally undermined by a lack of capacity in the system. Without what the report calls the “extraordinary efforts” of the “superhuman” workforce, the entire healthcare system would have collapsed.
But workers shouldn’t need to be “superhuman”, even in an emergency. It was a decade of Tory austerity that put healthcare workers and the NHS in this catastrophic position. By the time of the pandemic, austerity had left the UK’s health service short of staff, beds, ITUs, respirators and ventilators; what the report describes as a “parlous state”.
Healthcare workers were exhausted and overworked, skipping breaks and covering shifts to compensate for an overstretched, understaffed service. Rather than address these issues, the Tories were instead busy trying to force through backdoor privatisation through wholly-owned subsidiaries that took staff out of NHS contracts and undermined pay and conditions. These issues were only exacerbated during the pandemic and staff bore the brunt.
Healthcare workers had a seven times greater risk of severe Covid-19 infection than other workers and more than 900 died during the pandemic. They faced intolerable pressure for months on end and by the end of 2021, more than two thirds (69%) of healthcare staff had experienced burnout. Still the Tory government didn’t understand or care that increasing capacity meant more staff, and getting more staff meant better pay and better conditions.
Nightingale hospitals were a perfect example of this: the government wasted £358 million because ministers failed to understand that the limiting factor for treatment was the number of staff, not the number of beds. This was money used on expensive white elephants when funding was desperately needed to alleviate the devastating toll the pandemic was taking on healthcare staff.
Black and outsourced workers felt the impact most acutely. These workers were more likely to be redeployed into frontline roles and less likely to have the necessary PPE, and feared losing their jobs if they raised these issues. And then to add insult to injury, some outsourced staff were forced to take strike action to win the Covid bonus payment they richly deserved.
The treatment of healthcare workers during the pandemic was appalling but the problems remain. Below-inflation pay deals have left workers with years of real terms pay cuts and staffing levels remain unsafe across the health service.
To improve capacity, we must improve pay, terms and conditions and properly value all who work in the NHS. No more below-inflation pay deals and being strike ready when we need to be.
It also means campaigning against structural racism in the NHS and ensuring that Black workers do not face the same disproportionate impact in a future pandemic as they did during the Covid-19 pandemic.
And it means we must tackle the two-tier workforce and fight for our members working for private contractors to receive the same pay and conditions as their NHS colleagues.
The urgency we need is clear in the Inquiry’s report. We cannot expect healthcare workers to be ‘superhuman’ again. UNISON will take every action necessary to end the staffing crisis, properly fund the NHS, and make sure the catastrophe of the Covid-19 pandemic is not repeated. We owe it to our members, and to our NHS.
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