PARAMEDICS and emergency care assistants will join picket lines outside ambulance stations across the county as part of a nationwide strike.

Members of the UNISON union in Somerset will join the strikes that will take place on Wednesday, December 21, from noon until midnight.

Call-takers, dispatchers, and support services will be unaffected.

Front-line workers across the UK will also go on strike on Wednesday, December 28,

Workers are demanding a pay rise in line with the current inflation, but they also decided to go on strike to resolve issues regarding NHS staff retention and patients’ safety.

Every ambulance service in Somerset will be affected by the strike on Wednesday: Taunton, Bridgwater, Minehead, Ilminster, Glastonbury, Shepton, Burnham-on-Sea, Frome, Yeovil, Wincanton.

Workers will join picket lines outside all these stations except Glastonbury, Frome, and Wincanton, where UNISON has asked its members at these stations to join picket lines at their closest picketing station.

UNISON reports they will not be preventing staff from attending their work but want to send a clear and loud message to the Government.

Mutually there has been an agreement Unison will support and encourage striking and picketing members to respond to certain categories and types of calls, especially life-threatening calls.

An agreement UNISON states is “the right thing to do”.

Conor Calby, a South West Ambulance Service paramedic and lead representative in Somerset for Unison, said: “As for the reason behind the strike, the biggest one is pay, but it has become more about the future of the NHS.

“We have 130,000 vacancies in both clinical and non-clinical roles.

“Last year we had nine per cent of our staff leaving. The main reasons for the strikes are pay, retention, and patient safety.

“Staff are asking for a pay rise in accordance with the current inflation. Staff does not feel valued in the NHS.

“We have paramedics doing a three years degree, sometimes they also spend three extra years in education, and once they get a job they leave after two years because of burn-out or because they are over-stressed.

“There’s a record number of unanswered calls for an ambulance in the South West. The staff is overworked with other phone calls and cannot answer.

“We need to increase the number of our staff and we need to respect them and pay them the money they deserve.

“I sometimes feel some patients have an outdated impression that ambulances park up in laybys near their town and are waiting for their 999 call.

“Unfortunately, we’re working our 12-hour shifts seeing patients back-to-back with late meal breaks, large number of shifts finishing late - sometimes making shifts 15 hours long and the days of ‘standing by’ in laybys are long gone. This means patients are waiting more than ever for ambulances to come to their 999 call.

“Our members reported calls waiting minutes for 999 calls to even be answered – let alone for an ambulance to be dispatched.

“Our operational-frontline members are spending hours queuing at hospitals rather than seeing patients – due to NHS vacancies and due to a Government-caused NHS crisis.

“This is the picture up and down the country. We’re very grateful to the public for their support regarding this industrial action.

“This is a national pay and retention crisis. NHS pay is set by the Agenda for Change framework and not by local NHS trusts.

“As such, it’s the responsibility of the Government and Department of Health to step up and listen to their workforce. If they offer to engage in serious talks – these strikes can be averted.”

“You’ll hear the Government praise themselves for the recent 4 per cent pay rise they provided NHS staff – but they fail to mention the pension increases, alongside the standard tax deductions resulted in many NHS staff now taking home less than they did before the 4 per cent pay rise. How is that fair? How is that a pay rise?”

“Our members are asking for a pay rise in accordance with the current inflation. Looking back on the previous 10 years, NHS workers have had a 20 per cent real-term pay cut. I would suggest for our members this isn’t asking for a pay rise but rather a pay restoration.

“Staff does not feel valued in the NHS so leave for different careers with better working conditions, better home-work life balance, and better pay. Across the NHS last year, around 9 per cent of the NHS workforce left and we’re not able to aggressively recruit due to the higher-level education needed to replace many of them.

“We are very open to sit down with ministers but they are not. There is no other way for us to get the Government’s attention but to strike. No one wants to strike. We are working so hard to make sure patients are safe, their safety is paramount.

“I emailed MP Rebecca Pow three times over several years to invite her to work a shift on an ambulance with us to better inform her of the pressures the NHS is facing and to help her decision-making when voting on behalf of Taunton Deane constituents but I never received a single reply.”

Health and Social Care Secretary, Steve Barclay, said: “Our nurses are incredibly dedicated to their job and it is deeply regrettable some union members are going ahead with strike action.

“My number one priority is to keep patients safe – I’ve been working across government and with medics outside the public sector to ensure safe staffing levels - but I do remain concerned about the risk that strikes pose to patients.

“Nevertheless, the NHS is open and patients should continue to seek urgent medical care - and attend appointments unless they’ve been contacted by the NHS.

“These are challenging times, but we have accepted the recommendations of the independent NHS Pay Review Body in full to give nurses a pay rise of at least £1,400 – on top of a 3 per cent pay rise last year when wider public sector pay was frozen.

“Further pay increases would mean taking money away from frontline services at a time when we are tackling record waiting lists as a result of the pandemic.”

South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SWASFT) is largely formed of two unions with UNISON being the recognised union and GMB being an unrecognised, smaller union.

A recognised union is formed when at least 20 percent of the workforce are members.

GMB Union members will strike for 24 hours on Wednesday, December 21 - and will also strike on December 28 - but their membership in the South West is understood to be smaller than UNISON's.

UNISON’s members (ambulance workers, paramedics, and care assistants) will strike on December 21, but not on December 28.