We are republishing this article from Unite the Union rep, Dr John Mulligan who helped lead the successful action in mental health to demand more urgent resources for the Manchester Early Intervention in Psychosis Team.
Greater Manchester Keep Our NHS Public actively supported this principled action and KONP publicised it in our Health Campaigns Together bulletins.
This article is reproduced with permission from Counterfire
A long-running strike over resources by an NHS team has won a significant victory to gain the necessary staffing, showing the power of collective action, reports John Mulligan
In significant part thanks to organisations like Counterfire many of you will already know that our small NHS Early Intervention in Psychosis Service in Manchester has been on strike for the past nine months.
Far too many NHS teams will have firsthand experience of the staffing crisis that seems to be accepted or ignored across much of the NHS, to the detriment of the population we try and often fail to serve effectively. The ratio of frontline staff to patients within each service or ward or community is not something that gets much air time when politicians wax lyrical about their latest and greatest successes within the NHS.
England is a country where people with mental-health problems die on average fifteen to twenty years younger and where 43,800 people with mental-health difficulties die unnecessarily each year from preventable physical health problems.
A decade of non-investment and seeing the life-limiting impact that staffing shortages cause our patients left our Unison and Unite members feeling powerless. Worse, it left us feeling complicit in what for most people in Manchester experience as appalling community mental-health services.
When it was made clear to our members that our four years of effort to avert strike action and secure the additional staff we need was going nowhere slowly, we voted to strike. Last week, after nine months of action, our small service, supported by our unions and our community here in Manchester and beyond, won a dramatic victory. We secured £1 million of recurrent funding which will allow us to employ 21 more staff within the service.
With that investment, we will help many people to get back on track and move on from needing mental-health services quickly. Sadly, we work alongside patients at higher risk of suicide or victimisation, so it’s not an exaggeration to say that this investment will save lives.
If improving life chances, alleviating distress or reducing suicide doesn’t help you connect to our success then how about the finances? This investment will result in a net saving for the NHS and wider economy of £72.5 million over the next ten years.
We wanted 54 staff, which was the NHS England indicated ‘minimum adequate staffing’ calculation for our service. That 54 staff would have cost £3 million each year in the short term, but save the region a net amount of £217.5 million over ten years. One group’s dramatic victory is another group’s missed opportunity to save hundreds of millions, I suppose.
Against a backdrop of yet more years of austerity imposed by this disappointing Labour government, the achievement of this joint Unison and Unite endeavour is a shining example of the power of collective action. We thank all those who supported us to achieve this success and solidarity to all those on strike currently.
We hope our efforts and success encourages others to do what’s right. No staff should feel forced to work within services that are unsafe or ineffective. We have a right to withdraw our labour and demand more for our service users, their families and colleagues. We hope more people exercise that right and help return our NHS and our society into the healthy state in which we need both to be.
Dr John Mulligan
Unite the Union Rep
Manchester Early Intervention in Psychosis Service
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