#nurses strike

[nights-are-better]

it shouldn’t be a joke that people are broke in certain careers. it shouldn’t be a joke that people are broke in certain careers. it shouldn’t be a joke that people are broke in certain careers. it shouldn’t be a joke that people are broke in certain careers.

PAY YOUR WRITERS LIVEABLE WAGES. PAY YOUR HEALTH CARE WORKERS LIVEABLE. PAY TEACHERS LIVEABLE WAGES.

PAY YOUR WORKERS LIVEABLE WAGES

PAY PEOPLE SO THEY CAN LIVE

[mysharona1987]

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Solidarity with all the NHS workers striking right now (and everyone else striking, of course).

If people die due to this action, it should be on the conscience of the Tory Government, not on the workers.

[iww-gnv]

Tens of thousands of workers at Kaiser Permanente health care locations -- including in Colorado -- are now on strike. Picketing has begun outside facilities like the Aurora Centrepoint Medical Offices where the strikers are wearing purple shirts and waving signs, many saying "PATIENT CARE!" There are approximately 30 places in Colorado where the picketing will be happening. The strike is the largest for health care workers in U.S. history and is expected to last for three days. Kaiser Permanente management and union leaders spent the night and into this morning trying to work out a deal. Over the weekend, the two sides failed to reach an agreement with the main issues being low pay, short staffing and long wait times that employees say many patients are facing. In addition to Colorado, the strike is happening in California, Oregon, Virginia, Washington state and Washington, D.C., according to the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.

[destielmemenews]

"Picketers across California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington who are represented by a coalition of unions walked off the job Wednesday. They are seeking higher wages and solutions to a short-staffing crisis, exacerbated by the pandemic, that has left workers feeling overburdened and run down."

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[kipplekipple]

All my support for the NHS nurses, who have voted to strike.

I am multiply chronically ill and I need nurses for a wide variety of reasons. I need nurses who are well-paid, well-fed, and not distracted by financial concerns. I need nurses whose working conditions are good, nurses who come to work knowing they aren't being exploited.

Of course, I need that for everyone because I'm not an absolute monster. But just for those who will seek to use people like me as a bludgeon against medical personnel engaging in strike action - no thanks.

I need nurses who are in a position to do their jobs, not nurses who do their best despite.

[ineffectualdemon]

In this house we support unions and strike action

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

having been in hospital for the past five days, my anger at the tories' response to the strike has grown astronomically.

i already found it stupid because calling any medical professional in the nhs selfish for striking because "people who could have been saved are going to die" is a redundant argument. thats already happening because the tories have been chronically underfunding the nhs for over 12 years now. the system is underfunded, understaffed and overcrowded; people who shouldnt have died have died for a decade.

but like, this is the first time ive been on a ward for several days since 2008ish, so i didnt have as full a perspective as possible, which i do now.

and calling the nurses selfish is so fucking laughable.

im not gonna divulge all details about why im here but ill say that i could have been discharged on the second day because the concerning symptoms had disappeared, but after checking my lying vs standing blood pressure, i was kept in just in case.

anytime theres been an issue, its been dealt with immediately with whatever measures they can take. if the nurses couldnt, they paged the doctors immediately.

one of my issues was low blood pressure and while ive been here, its been checked several times a day and ive been woken up twice each night just to err on the side of caution. and yeah it was annoying to be woken up at 2am for it, im eternally grateful they did.

the lady next to me was struggling to get up on the bed because it was too high so the nurse called the porter and had them bring a shorter bed so shed be more comfortable.

i havent even seen any of them sit down until their shifts were over.

like logically, we all know that the tory rhetoric that "nurses are striking because theyre lazy and selfish, and just want more money" isnt true. but knowing it and seeing it firsthand is just so different.

and i already wanted to throw molotov cocktails are the tories but now i want to just shoot a flaming fucking arrow right between rishi sunaks eyes

[tweetingukpolitics]

[mysharona1987]

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Solidarity with nurses- they have been treated so poorly during the pandemic and more recently, they deserve everything.

[iww-gnv]

New York CNN — Savonnda Blaylock, a pharmacy technician in northern California, has worked for health care giant Kaiser Permanente for 22 years and she’s never been on strike. That could change on Wednesday when she becomes one of 75,000 workers who participate in the nation’s largest health care strike in history. Blaylock said it will be tough to walk off the job and away from her regular patients, even though the strike is set to last only three days. But Blaylock said she feels she has no choice given the staffing problems she now sees at the hospital, both as an employee and as a patient. “When we try to schedule appointments (for my mother), we’re told they don’t have the staff to accommodate her,” said Blaylock. “When I came to Kaiser, this was the best place to work. This was where I wanted to retire from. Now I think about leaving, though I don’t want to. On my shift now, there are probably about 12 of us. Pre-Covid there were 18. We’ve lost so many workers over the past three years.” If the coalition of unions does go on strike it would affect dozens of facilities in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Virginia and Washington, DC. Members of the coalition of unions — including nurses, therapists, technicians, dietary services, maintenance and janitorial staff — are set to walk out for a three-day strike starting on Wednesday. Kaiser said it has contingency plans in place to continue to provide care to patients during a strike.

[guilty-feminist]

[birdsthatsingaftermidnight]

Meanwhile, in politics, Rishi Sunak is presiding over an NHS so stripped of funds and resources that the nurses are coming out on strike (the NHS is, of course, still waiting for its backdated cheques for £350 million a week since the UK left the EU as promised by professional shitweasel, Boris Johnson). Nurses striking is unprecedented. It has never happened before. This is a vocation, not just a profession, and they can't afford to live. Nurses (and doctors and other health professionals) died during the worst of covid, trying to keep others alive. Others worked themselves to exhaustion and beyond. The NHS was collectively awarded the George Cross, the highest honour for valour outside of warfare in the UK, and daily lauded as essential and courageous and they cannot afford to live on their salaries. They certainly can't live on the weekly Thursday night applause they got during lockdown.

I can't tell you what our current government is doing about all this because as far as I can tell it is nothing but platitudes and handwringing and trying to convince us that this is somehow EXACTLY WHAT PUTIN WANTS.

Honestly, I'm getting secondhand embarrassment just from writing that.

[fayrobertsuk]

It’s Striking

Here’s the thing: the mail strikes are going to inconvenience me this year (have already done so - I get my meds via post), but I can mitigate against that. The nursing strikes, thank goodness, did not affect me directly, but I can see how they might if the future ones are necessary. Rail strikes are less of a thing for me currently as I’m not risking exposing my knackered immune system to public transport. That’s not the point.

All these events are inconveniencing people, making some parts of their lives harder, but if you’re not thinking about how workers choosing to protest in the only way left available to them - by withdrawing their labour, and crucially, not getting paid - and how vital these services are just by how they impact you, I don’t know what to tell you.

Everyone. EVERYONE needs to have the means at their disposal to live well, cover their basic needs of food and water, shelter, warmth, stability, security, family. EVERYONE. I’m not talking about deserving, I’m talking about needing. Every person on this planet needs the access to sustainable, secure living. And yes, I include in that criminals and drug users and people who don’t want to work. Everyone has the right to survival. The people on strike don’t have that. Their pay and conditions are so bad that people are leaving their organisations in droves, and those left are not being supported (not least because it’s proving difficult to replace the colleagues they’ve lost). They’re struggling to feed and safely house themselves and their families. This CANNOT be happening in the 21st Century, where we have more obscenely wealthy people than ever.

Union members think long and very hard before striking; it’s a huge matter for debate and negotiation, and is voted on by everyone in the union before the action is taken. Striking is a last resort, which should tell you a LOT.

So if you’re feeling angry or inconvenienced about it, do not blame the strikers - they are making an incredibly courageous move, and it’s the fault of the people failing to give them the means for survival (crucially - people who are incredibly wealthy and secure) that your post and your non-urgent medical appointments are being delayed, and you’re having to find other ways to get to work and school, etc. It’s on those failing to negotiate meaningfully, the greedy people putting profit above the safety and security of people like you. Don’t be fooled by media manipulation - those on strike have far more in common with you than you have with those telling you that the strikers are wrong. Never forget that. And never forget the importance of collective bargaining and the fact that rich people need you, and that you have more power than you realise.

[enbycrip]

Stuff I am finding difficult about the nurse’s strike:

There is a huge outpouring of stuff about “our NHS” and “our nurses” which is both brilliant, and unfortunately also currently being used to really beat and dogpile with abuse anyone who speaks up about shitty treatment, including medical disableism, they’ve received from nurses and other NHS staff.

Medical disableism is *incredibly* prevalent and leads to serious issues for a huge number of (I’d say likely most) disabled people. This partially reflects the disableism rife in the UK public - nurses and other healthcare workers are not immune to the barrage of right wing political messaging - and partially some serious structural issues in medical education.

I 100% support the nurse’s strike - because they are workers, and people, who deserve decent pay and conditions in their working life. It is a very difficult job, not only due to the emotional labour required in a caring role, but because they are dealing with an enormous amount of politically-motivated chaos as the Tories systematically underfund the NHS in an attempt to destroy it. I 100% support and approve their action to fight that bullshit and improve their situation.

However; this does not make nurses either “angels” or above reproach. It makes them humans suffering difficult conditions who deserve support to better those conditions - like other workers facing capitalist bullshit and exploitation.

It does not change that nurses, like other healthcare workers, and other carers, are in a power relationship with their patients which puts them in a position uniquely capable of abusing those patients. Particularly when those patients are already physically and/or emotionally vulnerable due to illness and/or injury, and/or they belong to already marginalised groups such as BIPOC, queer folk, and/or disabled folk.

It takes a lot of care and awareness not to abuse those power relations, and plenty of nurses, other healthcare workers, and other carers, don’t. They often perpetuate the systemic abuses marginalised people face, and sometimes they abuse vulnerable people on an individual basis too.

All these facts exist *together*. *All* of these things are true.

I’ve seen a *lot* of people raising abuses and disableism they’ve suffer be hit with “what, you want us to be the US?” This is such a fallacy in so many ways - notably 1) the issue of medical disableism is systemic, and fucking *hell* it exists in the US 2) disabled people tend to live in poverty and thus are in an even worse position in the US.

But most of all, it’s a fallacy because *exposing abuses within and criticising a system does not mean wanting to destroy it*. It’s about *wanting to improve it*.

It’s an example of the same issue that constantly arises with climate change protestors being screamed at if they ever use a car. It is entirely possible, indeed, essential to live within a system and yet *desperately* attempt to improve it.

I’m asking everyone who sees this to:

1) support the nurse’s strike, because it’s *essential* to support a large group of low-paid workers fighting to improve their working conditions

2) speak about the fact that it is possible to do this *and* want to improve how nurses treat patients, especially marginalised ones

3) actively go in to support any marginalised folks you see being dogpiled and abused for speaking up about medical disableism and medical and caregiver abuse.

Part of how systemic disableism operates on a social level is to treat anyone caring for disabled folks as “angels”, above reproach. Whether they’re paid to do so or not.

What this perpetuates is

1) disabled people being conditioned to accept any abuse they receive. The message is “be grateful you’re not just being left for dead”. Which is ridiculous. Disabled people are people. We deserve decent lives free from abuse like every other person.

2) people in those professions being conditioned to accept low pay and shitty working conditions. Because they’re “vocations” you do because “you’re an angel” who doesn’t think about money. Which is also ridiculous. Workers in every profession deserve decent pay and conditions for the work they do, and carers, systemically, don’t. Carers, systemically, are abused - they work long hours, for crap pay, and often in shitty conditions.

As a disabled person, I *want* carers to be paid and treated well. Because I’m a decent human being who wants other humans to live decent lives, AND because I think carers who are paid and treated well do their jobs of caring for vulnerable and marginalised people better.

Also: FFS, if you have any ability to do so, put pressure on Labour to actively support the strikes or change their bloody name.