Ambulance workers have told ministers that clapping for NHS workers has done nothing to help them pay their bills.
Up to 15,000 Unison paramedics and call handlers went on strike on Monday as they intensified their industrial action over pay.
Simone Morgan, 50, who responds to 999 calls in Wakefield and is a member of Unison, accused ministers of spending too much time in “nice toasty offices” than finding out what the situation is really like on the frontline.
“I mean, have they actually been into an emergency centre and sat and listened to the calls that we take? What if it was one of their family members that needed an ambulance in an emergency?” she said.
“All they keep saying is that we should learn to budget. But like anything else, we've only got so much to budget on. When everybody was clapping for us a couple years ago, those claps are not paying our bills.”
Lyndsay Jephson, an ambulance clinician and student paramedic at Yorkshire Ambulance Service, said “sitting in an office looking at statistics” was not going to give ministers a “realistic” insight into the everyday challenges ambulance services were facing.
“They do not have a realistic view of what we do.... They need to see visually, practically... They’ve got a masked view of the NHS. What they need to do is put their feet in our shoes and do the work that we do 24 hours a day,” she said.
Ambulance crews who are members of the GMB, Unison and Unite unions took part in walkouts across the country yesterday. At picket lines passing drivers beeped their horns to show their support for the NHS workers.
Staff are leaving the NHS in droves, with many opting for better paid and less stressful work in private sector roles in supermarkets or factories.
Sara Gorton, head of health at Unison, took aim at Chancellor Jeremy Hunt for failing to stump up the cash for a proper pay rise.
She said she was “dumbfounded” the former health secretary had not attempted to resolve the dispute.
“Jeremy Hunt is in the position where he's got far more experience than any of his Cabinet colleagues about the NHS," she said.
“As recently as the summer he was writing reports saying we needed investment in the NHS and in the workforce.
“I don't understand why somebody who understands, in such a detailed way, the impact of not investing in the workforce has on the health services we all rely on, has not been the one to come forward and ask for our help,” she said.
After failing to secure a breakthrough in discussions with Health Secretary Steve Barclay, unions leaders now want the Chancellor to meet with them to “open the door to the kind of detailed talks that we need”, Ms Gorton said.
“What's needed now is that upfront commitment from the Chancellor that he will invest.”
On picket lines, paramedics and call handlers shared horrific stories of ambulance waits and handover delays.
Ambulance technician and GMB member Jacs Murphy, 54, said staff are seeing people die "all the time" either because emergency staff cannot get to them or they are not getting the care they need in time.
Speaking at a picket line at Donnington ambulance station near Telford, Shropshire, she said: "We are at the stage where we are losing staff day after day after day, because they cannot keep going on the way they are going, and that means we can't look after our patients."
Bronté Williams, 24, who responds to emergency calls at A&E in Leeds, said they are forced “to improvise” care for patients who have to wait down corridors on stretchers for hours due to a lack of beds.
She said they often have to hold the medication bag if they need an IV and move the patient around so they don’t get pressure sores due to uncomfortable stretchers.
“It's just the dignity for the patients. There's no privacy at all and that's the worst thing,” she said.
She said staff have to help patients go to the toilet or change them in corridors.
“We place an incontinent sheet underneath them on the stretcher. It's not ideal,” she said. “We do try our best to make them as comfortable as we can, but it's not always possible.”
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has said mass strike action could be called off if ministers offer a 10% pay rise.
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