NHS Staff Voices – Where we stand

    • We stand for an NHS protected from privatisation, commercialisation and cuts to services
    • We campaign for a fully and publicly-funded NHS that is capable of delivering a world-class service for all, no matter where you come from or what you earn
    • We aim to create an opportunity for staff and students across the NHS to network and share experiences and ideas; to develop campaigns, work with unions and organise actions
    • We aim to join up Frontline NHS workers with the experience of community NHS campaigners up and down the country

NHS Staff Voices (NSV) are committed to protecting the NHS from the damage of underfunding and to defend it from those who seek to put private profit ahead of our patients. The current Covid-19 crisis has exposed the poor pay and conditions of many NHS workers - both in-house and outsourced right across the sector and the weaknesses of organisation among NHS workers.

Despite various and often life-threatening inefficiencies to get PPE and tests, alongside continued discrimination where people from BME communities are still the most at risk during the Covid-19 crisis, and can ‘feel targeted’ to work on Covid-19 wards, there has been little news of resistance from staff.

NHS Staff Voices salutes the work done by trade unions who have worked tirelessly to protect its members from unnecessary risks, such as the National Education Union (NEU) who have resisted the Government’s attempt to prematurely ease the lockdown and re-open the schools. NSV believes that the NEU #FiveTests campaign offers health and social care sectors a clear guide of how to campaign against the dangerous attempt to relax (already woeful) safety measures during this lethal pandemic.

Click to view our 'NHS Staff Voices' postcard

Our aim is to continue to grow our network of NHS staff (including outsourced staff that work with us in the NHS) around a series of demands that can bring us together in our workplaces, in our unions and across society.

Our NHS Worker demands are:

  • Keep the lockdown until:
  • Appropriate PPE supplied to all public-facing workers
  • Freely available testing
  • Rigorous contact tracing
  • Widespread studies to determine the prevalence of Covid-19
  • Trade union oversight of safety measures on return to any workplace
  • Living wage and improved sick pay for covid-related illness and self-isolation
  • Stop privatisation and outsourcing by repeal of the HSCA 2012 and replace with NHS (reinstatement) Act
  • End hostile environment-generated eligibility checks for NHS care
  • Adequate funding for the NHS therefore a halting of cuts and closures unless for good clinical reasons
  • Keep health out of trade deals
Download the NHS Staff Voices 'Who do you trust? Stay at home' flyer here

NHS Staff Voices believe that the call to ‘stay home, save lives, protect the NHS’ though delayed, reduced pressure on an already weakened NHS. Had the country not been forced into lockdown, the huge death toll would have been much worse. However, With deaths rising to 60,000, the Prime Minister tells us it is time to get back to work. Johnson’s advice to “stay alert” is scientifically meaningless and dangerous. Leading doctors in the British Medical Association have condemned the plan as: “too fast, too confusing, and too risky”, and it is likely to usher in a second spike of the virus.

We demand these preconditions must be met before lockdown is ended:

  • Appropriate PPE supplied to all public facing workers
  • Freely available testing
  • Rigorous contact tracing
  • Widespread studies to determine the prevalence of Covid-19
  • Trade union oversight of safety measures on return to any workplace

If we end lockdown now thousands more people will die. The government’s rationale for this is to get the economy moving no matter the cost. Now is not the time. It’s time to put people before profit.

NSV believes it is the responsibility of NHS workers to add our voices to a campaign that puts our health and safety before ‘business as usual’ and to work hard to convince the public that the Government cannot be trusted on this issue.