What it's like to be an ambulance driver in Rishi Sunak's UK

Amongst the soaring cost of living crisis in the UK, ambulance workers across England have gone on strike in an ongoing dispute over pay. If anyone could say caption this scene right now with one word, solidarity full stop. The government can see that we're all in need, not just one of us, you know, not just two of us, all of us are in need. Again, it's not really about just pay. In the capital, London Ambulance Service unison members set up picket lines. Paramedics, technicians, all the staff here, even control have decided to come out and strike because nobody is listening to what we are actually experiencing at work at the moment. We haven't got enough staff to like man the vehicles, which means the public can't get in the service that they deserve.

We're not being treated fairly by the government. We're not there. Nobody is listening to what we're actually asking for. I think people talk about the NHS being on the brink of collapse and I think we're past that. I think it has collapsed already. Currently we're seeing hundreds and hundreds of calls waiting per London with no ambulances to send. Patients are waiting hours and hours.

When we arrive that they're dying or dead already, it's absolutely heartbreaking. By having better pay, we'd be able to keep staff attention a little bit better at the moment. We're losing a lot of staff because of the financial crisis that's going on. Many ambulance workers within the NHS and inside the union see their current salary as incompatible with the costs of rent, fuel and food in the UK right now. We have people that are running say £13 an hour and they're doing life saving, life and death jobs and you have people that work in a coffee shop that are on £13 an hour. Why would you stay in a very stressful job when you're not appreciated when you could do something else? For 20 years I've been in the ambulance service and essentially my money has been worth less year on year which is not ideal. I feel like 20 years service, that sort of loyalty needs to be, should be rewarded.

My money should be at least worth the same as it was last year and inflation level rises to the bare minimum I feel like we deserve. We're just so busy all the time, it's like constant. On an average of a five hour shift we do six jobs maybe seven sometimes. If there are easy jobs to turn around quickly. But then as you're out and then you're out back to another job, back to back to back, all the time we're standing in hospital queues, people are getting patients who are probably getting frustrated at us because they've been waiting so long. People just can be quite horrible to be honest. I've been assaulted, sexually assaulted, all sorts of things in my career.

So when I joined 33 years ago I'm absolutely devastated really about how the service has become now. It's a job that I'm really proud to do and it's a job now that I feel I can't do to the best of my ability because we haven't got the resources, we haven't got the staff to take some of the strain off us. It is constant. We don't get the time to let down. Work-life balance is all work and no home life now. I mean a lot of people now, a lot of ambulance workers, they're actually leaving a lot earlier than they used to. Years ago most of the people would stay and have a career in ambulance service for like up to seven or eight years, maybe even longer and now people are only lasting about a year or two.

The strikes come at a time of unprecedented trade union action across the UK with multiple labour disputes, disrupting public services and what many are calling the new winter of discontent. Me and my partner who also works for the ambulance service have a young child so she's at the moment down to part time and bills are going up, mortgage rates are going up, food rates are going up. So the way it affects you is the real world pay cut that we're having when we may not have had a technical pay cut but because of the inflation our money goes less so we can't afford as much. We're quite lucky, we are both working and we are very fortunate in that way. I do know people that is affected a lot more than me, people often to use food banks and things like that. At the moment I'm not there but if inflation continues to rise, food bills go up, energy crisis goes up further then yeah, our food allowance is dwindling at the moment and we've got a family to feed as have so many people in the country at the moment. I'm worried about the NHS because I feel that this government is idealistically against the NHS and they have during my lifetime certainly this government, the Conservative government have classic playbook, have underfunded, denigrated and privatised sections of the NHS over and over again.

So I'm concerned because I feel that that pattern continues, we are going to end up with some kind of insurance based health system which most of us won't be able to afford. I think a lot of us don't maybe realise the costs involved in just having a baby or breaking a bone. These little simple things that we take for granted, if we keep going down the track we're going down at the moment, we aren't going to have a free at the point of service NHS that people can afford so it will be a system where the rich can afford to be well and the poor cannot afford to be unwell. NHS bosses, a brace for a massive day of strike action in February. Workers from five ambulance trusts in England and Wales will strike on February the 6th if the disputes are not resolved. On the same day nurses will also stage industrial action. Tonight, get together and make a change.

We're all nosed together and the more we come together the more likely we are to see progress. The word solidarity to me means everybody joining together, we're all fighting for the same cause, we're like a big family here and yeah it's just lots of love and everyone just looking out for each other. In broken Britain there is solidarity amongst the ashes of a system that's not working. The workers of the NHS deserve our solidarity, they are the ones who continue to save life.

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