Paramedics Forced To Protest For Permanent Contracts

Strike action by paramedics is vital now to push back attack on them which will see the National Ambulance Service offer them 16 week contracts instead of full time contracts following graduation.

80 fully qualified paramedics will have to compete for permanent jobs after years of on the job training and work. One worker said: “We would now be required to reapply and interview competitively for our existing positions”.

She told the Independent: “We feel undervalued and unfairly treated after meeting every requirement asked of us. Paramedics are highly trained healthcare professionals. We respond daily to cardiac arrests, strokes, traumatic injuries, emergency childbirths, and provide essential care to vulnerable and elderly patients in crisis situations… I love my job and feel privileged to serve my community.”

SIPTU had already balloted paramedics because of a whole litany of issues including enhanced pay scales for upskilling. SIPTU organiser John McCamley, in a statement from the union, said: “The decision by the HSE/National Ambulance Service’s management not to offer student paramedics permanent roles post-qualification for the first time has confirmed that management’s increasingly unilateral approach to industrial relations.”

But this high handed attitude from the NAS and HSE is precisely because strikes are often called off at the last minute for talks that get nowhere. The threat of strike action needs to be real - we need words followed by deeds to put manners on the bureaucrats with their “unilateral approach”.

We’ve had 40 years of outsourcing and privatisation slowly destroying the public health service. The HSE bureaucrats who oversee this process of destruction are highly paid by the state to hand over public services to the wealthy, who can turn on profit out of health.

Only real sustained strike action can put manners on this neoliberal bureaucracy but ultimately we have to clear them out and fight for a health service run by workers themselves as part of a planned economy. Anything else will be eroded by the market piece by piece, year after year, until there’s nothing left and workers have no rights at all.

There’s massive support for the paramedics. If they fight other workers will support them.