Science & Environment

By Andy Ford

(Unite member, candidate for health section of Unite NEC)

NHS scientists are crucial to healthcare in the UK. Although they make up just 5% of the workforce, they are integral to 80% of diagnoses, conducting 1.5 billion tests each year. Their work of analysing blood and tissue samples allows medical staff to identify diseases and monitor conditions. Without the NHS scientific workforce (biomedical scientists, clinical scientists and lab support workers) doctors would struggle to decide on the correct treatments for patients. Their work covers from birth to death, and from A&E to cancer care.

Despite this importance, NHS scientists have been constantly targeted for cuts/consolidation or privatisation through both Labour and Conservative governments. The Carter Reports of 2008 and 2016 recommended the creation of huge ‘pathology hubs’ situated remotely from the hospitals they serve, which would make them easy privatisation targets.

And in fact, some pathology services have been privatised, with dire results for our members. One of the privatised pathology hubs has a contract which states “We may change your contract at any time by placing a notice on the Company noticeboard”. Nice! That is more like serfdom than normal employment. Laboratory services in the USA follow this model, and of course are fully (and profitably) under private ownership.

And even when the labs have not been pushed over into pathology hubs and/or privatised, recent NHS changes have created convoluted management structures where the labs in one hospital are managed the labs in another. In my own region one Trust with a massive PFI problem has gradually been taking over the labs in the nearby Trusts, accompanied by so-called ‘savings’ and cuts in staff and on-call payments.

Change relationships between medical staff and scientists

These complicated set-ups change the relationship between medical staff and scientists from a clinical relationship to a contractual one, which generates a lot of problems. Instead of working jointly for the good of the patients, it turns into the attempted enforcement of a contract. Each Trust should have its own professional laboratory service, which they own and control.

The importance of the scientific workforce was shown during Covid, when lab tests and tracing were the bedrock of the fight against Covid. And the decision to more or less bypass the NHS service led to untold cost, corruption and errors [See article on Covid testing in Left Horizons]

Likewise, Streeting and Starmer’s pledge to reduce waiting lists is reliant on investment in the scientific workforce and the NHS lab facilities, not that they recognise this. They prefer photo ops about ‘doctors and nurses’ aimed at the next news cycle.

Instead of investment, the Institute of Biomedical Science (IBMS) found that the scientific workforce suffers with “Long-term issues including excessive workloads, fatigue and the chronic problem of unfilled vacancies”. Many hospital labs operate on badly managed and under-staffed shift systems that barely reach the legal minimum set by the Working Time Directive. Young women who have children quite often find that they are being ordered back onto rotating night shifts after just a few weeks. No wonder there is a staffing crisis.

But trade unionism is not about moaning or complaining; it’s about organising and winning. We have to bring our reps together, regularly, to draw up joint campaigns to enforce good practice on shifts, staffing, training and development, and structured progression from Band 5 to 6; using the traditional trade union tools of building membership, codifying concerns into grievances, and industrial action where needed.

And where we have no reps, we need to be putting organisers in contact with the members. We have to find those people who care enough about their working conditions – and the service we provide – to organise their colleagues, and organise to win.

[Feature picture shows Andy Ford, “a long time ago”, grouping blood the old way, with pipette, a bowl and microscope.]

This article is from the campaign website of Andy Ford, who is standing in the HEALTH section for the NEC of Unite. Original article here.

The campaign website, with other articles and the election statement, can be found here.