Clinical nursing assistant Joe Baldwin worked tirelessly on the NHS front line throughout the pandemic.
The 36-year-old was redeployed across all departments at Liverpool’s Aintree Hospital as, along with thousands of colleagues across Britain, he went above and beyond the call of duty to keep the desperately ill alive.
But Joe slowly began to realise the life he had known was slipping away from him. Despite having 14 years experience at the hospital under his belt he was only earning £18,500-a-year and, as prices began to shoot up, his wage no longer covered life’s basics.
He had to move out of his dockside flat and rent a cheaper one, join a food union to buy subsidised goods and ditch his monthly travel pass.
On some days he now walks the six miles from his city centre home to the hospital.
Softly-spoken Glaswegian Joe says: “Everything was going up and I had to take out loans to survive. I suddenly found myself having to choose between paying the bills or buying food, and the bills came first.
“I just feel downtrodden. It’s soul-destroying talking to my colleagues. Morale is on the floor in our hospital.
"Even senior staff, who earn £35,000 are on their knees. I’ve seen them sliding down walls crying their eyes out.
“People are missing shifts and phoning in sick because they can’t afford to pay for nursery costs.”
What a way to treat those heroes we clapped so proudly on our doorsteps not so long ago.
We’re sitting in the banqueting room of Liverpool’s Adelphi Hotel at a rally to publicise Saturday’s TUC day of action.
I’ve been to weddings and birthdays in this large, chandeliered room and heard it rocking with joy and laughter. But this time it is shaking with anger. As more than 100 people listened to stories about the pain and suffering triggered by the worst cost of living crisis for decades, there was fury and exasperation.
Liz Collins, a Liverpool Women’s Hospital midwife who has come straight from her shift, echoes Joe’s experiences. The 57-year-old, who has worked in the NHS for 40 years, says: “Not so long ago you would never have dreamed NHS professionals would be using food-banks but I know midwives, nurses and healthcare assistants who are.
“There are probably a couple of hundred across Merseyside and Cheshire.” The national picture backs her up. At least six NHS trusts have launched staff food banks or vouchers to help with the rising cost of living.
Liz adds: “We feel undervalued, underpaid and are working longer hours than we’re contracted to do yet the feeling of not being able to make ends meet is worse than it’s ever been. When I started in the 1980s you didn’t hear people complaining all the time about pay. I feel so sorry for single parents who have difficulty in feeding their children and heating their home.”
Research from debt collectors Lowell and the US-based Urban Institute think-tank shows five of England’s top 10 constituencies hardest hit by the cost of living crisis are in Merseyside.
The city has always known poverty. From those who emigrated from Ireland during the famine of the 1840s, to the Depression of the 1920s and the economic earthquake under Margaret Thatcher that decimated its manufacturing in the 1980s.
But we have a different type of poverty today. In the past it was due to not working and having no money.
Today much of it is being experienced by people holding down one or even two jobs.
We didn’t hear in the 1980s of teachers bringing food in to feed pupils, proud families didn’t have to go begging to foodbanks and pensioners weren’t going to bed at 5pm because they couldn’t afford to eat or heat the house.
As Margaret Tyson told the audience: “When I retired I thought I’d have enough money to last until I die. Now I’m worried I don’t. No one is speaking up for pensioners. We can’t go on strike but we expect you to support us.
“Fight for the pensioners because we fought for you.”
West Derby MP Ian Byrne, who is attempting to get a basic Right to Food enshrined in law, despairs at the poverty he sees around him.
He says: “We’re in the biggest crisis in living memory. Two weeks ago I had a phone call from a pensioner who said he had to choose between heating or powering up his wheelchair.
“It’s a complete failure of capitalism and it can’t go on.
“I have a Nelson Mandela quote in my office. It says, ‘Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the action of human beings’. It’s about time we got on with it.”
Saturday’s TUC march and rally in London will be a start.
- All this week the Daily Mirror is travelling the UK reporting on the cost of living crisis and the consequences of it. Today we are on thefront line in Liverpool.
The TUC is demanding...
The Mirror is supporting the TUC’s We Demand Better march and rally.
Join the march and rally on Saturday. Assemble from 10.30am at Portland Place, London. March departs 12pm. Rally at 1pm
tuc.org.uk/DemandBetter
- .A real pay rise for every worker and a real living wage for all.
- Respect & security for all workers: ban zero hours contracts and fire & rehire, decent sick pay now.
- An end to racism at work.
- Real, permanent boost to universal credit.
- Boost union bargaining rights now.
