Canary in the coal mine: it’s time for us to properly listen to frontline workers

Photo by Nicolas J Leclercq on Unsplash

As we step into 2023, the country is braced for some difficult months ahead with the ever-worsening cost of living crisis and spiralling energy prices. It is therefore no coincidence that we are seeing a winter with levels of strike action not seen for decades. From postal workers to nurses, school staff, offshore energy workers and railway workers, frontline staff across the country are taking collective action to demand better pay, secure rights and safe working conditions. Many of these striking workers are in the public sector, including departments within the civil service. 100,0000 members of the PCS union voted for strike action in December, representing 214 government departments including Border Force staff, driving test examiners and staff at the Rural Payments agency. Even members of the FDA union, which represents senior civil servants, NHS officials and others, have been calling for strike action, with 81% of fast streamers voting in favour of strike action in an indicative ballot. As PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka remarked: “This is the start of the most sustained strike action by civil servants for a generation.” 

Working at the coalface

Industrial action is usually a last resort in desperate situations such as these. Nurses join the many working people now relying on food banks as the cost of living crisis worsens, while a recent survey from the BMA revealed that 4 in 10 junior doctors plan to quit the NHS as soon as they can due to poor pay and working conditions. As our clap for carers from early Covid lockdown rings hollow, those key workers are now demanding the genuine compensation they deserve.

But their demands extend much further beyond the personal needs of workers: these strikes are just as much about the changes that workers want to see for the benefit of service users and the system as a whole. Present on the ground every day, frontline workers are the first ones to see the impact of government decisions such as cuts to healthcare spending, despite voicing their concerns about the knock-on effects many times over. They have long been the canary in the coalmine regarding threats to public health and our ability to respond to them. The Royal College of Nursing 2017 report warned about the dangers posed by low staffing numbers in hospital, with over half of nurses reporting that patient care was compromised on their last shift because of low staffing levels, but only 37% nurses reporting that any action was taken when they voiced their concerns. Six years later, it is those same healthcare workers still raising their voices to tell us that “patients are dying day in, day out" due to staff shortages, a lack of hospital beds, and hours-long queues of ambulances outside hospitals. 

Frontline workers understand the problems, and they have ideas for how to fix them too. We have seen time and time again in our Telescope programmes that those working on the frontline, from social care staff to probation officers, are full of great ideas about how to tackle the pain points in the system, and are passionate about finding pathways to implement these solutions.

A call for better listening and understanding

Despite this extensive expertise and capacity to propose solutions, these frontline voices are still not being heard in government, and the calls for change have continued to go unmet. Collective industrial action is a powerful vehicle for change in battles such as these, but we urgently need to create an ongoing dialogue, based on empathy and understanding, if long-term change is to be sustained. 

Policymakers already know that better listening is needed. The 2020 Civil Service Reform report acknowledged the frustration and sense of detachment felt on both sides of this divide, commenting that:

“By collaborating with delivery experts, policymakers are more likely to develop an evidence base that shows what is deliverable and needed, and delivery experts are more likely to understand the wider context and decisions that underpin a policy or service. This is a source of frustration for people and organisations who deliver policy and services to citizens. They feel that the instructions given by policymakers are not grounded in operational reality about how people on the frontline work or the needs of citizens.”

We know that much of the current debate comes down to political and ideological differences, which dialogue alone cannot overcome. But it is only by creating the time and space to listen and understand the experience of the frontline, that we can ever hope to create policies and services that reflect the reality on the ground. It’s going to require genuine change in the behaviours, structures and processes of government, to finally respect the expertise of these practitioners and formally involve them in policy and political decisions. But in the long run, we know these changes are essential to build a society that serves us all.