Today Wednesday 7th February 2024 is the last day of this phase of an epic strike.

A fresh vote is required, in law, for the strike to continue, and that strike ballot is underway.

Why is it important way beyond Wirral or even beyond Cheshire and Merseyside?

NHS pay is far worse in real terms than before austerity policies began.This is true for every kind of NHS worker.

The strike at Arrowe  Park and Clatterbridge is about banding and back pay.Clinical Support Workers should be paid band 3 but this group had been paid band 2 for a long time.

These are the healthworkers who work very closely with patients tending to personal care, feeding,  minor medical issues and making patients feel cared for and helping  the patients laugh and so recover.

It looked at one point like an agreement was in sight and staff would be regraded and back pay allowed.

Then, the deal was seen to exclude many of the workers,so the strike continued.

Why does it matter to the public?

1.Regulated pay, conditions, qualifications, and inhouse professional development are all essential to a safe workforce.Casualised,low paid, high turnover work, as we see in other industries and sections of privatised social care is very bad for patients,costly to the taxpayer and bad for the workers.It also wrecks the health of the workforce.

2 The NHS is supposed to be an Anchor Institution, one that provides good  pay and conditions for its workforce and, in so doing, improves life in the area it serves. The theory is that as a significant section of the community has decent pay, and working conditiond, the community as well as the individual will be healthier.Other employers will (the theory goes) have to  match those conditions to be able to recruit.So downgrading staff pay and conditions affects not just NHS staff but the wider communities

3. This is largely a women’s  workforce. ( Big cheers to all the fellas  on the picket line, too). These workers provide care, an essential of human life in all its glories, all its ups and downs, at all ages and traditionally provided by women, so underpaid.Care matters.Care is important, life affirming workHowever, care is really unde valued and underpaid in this society, by this government and by bosses.It’s up to the community to champion care.So lets support these workers

4. The NHS is being stripped to the bone by this government  and their big business cronies. A cheaper workforce is a huge gift to them but real damage to patients, workers, and the communities.So lets help these workers win.

5. A trade union is when workers come together to improve their conditions and pay.This is an epic trade union struggle.These women and men at Arrowe Park and Clatterbridge have stood together in solidarity over a long time, in sunshine rain and snow determined to protect and improve their wages, their working conditions.They are quietly demanding  the respect due to them from their bosses and the wider employer.In  so doing that they  defend far more people than their own union branch.

6. In striking and picketing for so long, in such numbers, these are a warning to the  NHS and other employers.They have made history.

7. The picket had fun with music dancing and more.

8.Unison have supported their members well in this dispute. Other unions could learn from them

When the  current ballot closes, the strike can restart, or the bosses could pay up.Either way  celebrate and support these care workers.