Nurses must win battle for hearts and minds

We have serious industrial action in the health service and promises being thrown around like confetti at a wedding. It’s dog eat dog and cat eat mouse and they’ll rag mama rag all over yer house. As Clarence Gatemouth Brown sang, there’s dirty work at the crossroads…

The ins and outs of the nurses’ dispute with the health service employers have been well aired over recent weeks and I don’t propose to rehash them here. Last time out there was general sympathy with their cause, this time there’s much more dissent.
It may be that in an economy featuring very significant layoffs in the industrial sector, people are more jaundiced about public servants in revolt. For all the shortcomings of their situation, they have a guaranteed job at a stable rate of pay and a state pension to boot. Others don’t.
The nurses are just fighting their corner. That’s their clear entitlement. And anyone who has emerged from the deep after major surgery or an accident would want them well treated.
They might even argue that the health service is over-loaded with administrative functions and procedures as against direct services to patients. And they might be right. But you ride a tiger at your peril and politicians, even those going for the Government’s jugular, are largely keeping off it.
At the end of the day, the taxpayers pay. You can’t give nurses a 35-hour week and more money without cost or effect. The 35-hour week will mean either recruiting more nurses or reducing services. The increased pay will mean diverting resources, cutting services or raising taxes.
The tax bonanzas of recent years have tapered off so anything that raises the stakes in terms of wages and salaries alarms Government and employers.
Competitiveness is undermined by high wages and the nurses’ claim, if met outside benchmarking, would precipitate a succession of consequential claims and a meltdown in the public finance… Or so we’re told. We are also reminded that our inflation is worryingly high and is also consistently higher than in other Eurozone countries.
Among the causes are increased energy prices, especially in oil and gas. And it ain’t going to get much easier. A new economic power bloc is emerging with the proposed establishment of an OPEC-style group for gas exporters, including Russia.
This is not good news for us. With dwindling reserves of gas – which we hardly owned anyway – we’re especially vulnerable to international swings and roundabouts. Same goes for oil. When the Iranians captured those British sailors, the price of oil jumped sharply, hence our last inflation ‘spike’.
Well, that’s how it goes. We’re all globalised now. What happens in Iran affects us all. And until we’re free of our dependence on oil, that’s how it’s going to be.
In that regard, I see that Arab rulers meeting at a summit in Riyadh last month make it clear they will no longer tolerate US interference in region. Their declaration was described as ‘uncompromising’ by Michael Jansen, writing in the Irish Times. It would seem that an old consensus is breaking down.
Just why this should happen now is anyone’s guess. But it may be that the fallibility of the Americans and the limits of their power have been exposed in Iraq. Even despots like the Saudi rulers now realise that US power was as much myth as reality. It’s not that they’re defying the Americans, more that they are conscious that to save their skins they have to be seen to be more independent.
But it raises the likelihood that oil and gas will increase in price and that higher costs will be with us for the foreseeable future. The lapdogs are starting to snarl.
All this comes at a price for us and one that wages and salaries may not be able to match. Hence the significance of the nurses’ campaign and the worries over increased costs and decreased competitiveness.
It may be that the health system will improve as a result of the nurses’ action but if so, we all need to know how. It’s not just about better conditions for nurses. It’s about building a better service. If we can all be convinced that there’s such a pay-off it will be easier to swallow the cuts or extra costs.
Now, about that election…