The ongoing wave of public sector strikes, some of which could continue into the autumn, has been motivated by two main factors. One – the most immediate – is the spike in inflation and the cost of living crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine. For workforces which had already endured a steady erosion of pay and living standards for over a decade, this amounted to a blow upon the bruise inflicted by austerity.
The longer-term grievance relates to the more general underfunding and implicit undervaluing of public services, which successive Conservative governments have starved of necessary resources. For NHS employees especially, this has too often turned what should be the pursuit of a vocation into a quotidian exercise in putting out fires. The chronic recruitment and retention crises in our hospitals are the consequence of this dire combination of declining pay and increasingly beleaguered, morale-sapping working conditions.
