A reedited version of
an article I wrote on the original HPANWO blog in 2008.
I was given a copy of the book this book by a retired doctor
I met on
July the 6th 2008.
I was attending a party hosted by the Lord Mayor of
Oxford
to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service; I was
representing the porters for our hospital's principle trade union UNISON. The
doctor had been a young GP in 1948 and was one of the first British physicians
to sign her practice over to the NHS. The 2003 book
Hard Work by Polly Toynbee chronicles her experiences as she does
some of the worst paid jobs in
Britain.
The author is a veteran liberal journalist who has been raising awareness of
social injustice for almost forty years. There is serious poverty in
Britain
today; and for a change it's not because of unemployment. Fewer people are out
of work than during the Thatcher years of the 80's, and most of the poor are
not unemployed, but working. A whole sector of super-low paid jobs have emerged
under the Blair regime. This has resulted in the emergence of an underclass of
employed poor numbering over three million. The majority are women and a large
proportion are foreign workers; simply grateful to be in this country after
having escaped even worse poverty in their homelands, they are ripe picking for
slave labour by public service contractors. The poverty today is less
in-your-face than it used to be. Poor people don't wear cloth caps and flannel
and more; because of low-cost fake designer clothes, poor people dress the same
way as the rich. I found this book very poignant and the author is clearly
enraged over the issue, quite rightly. She spent a few months with an
employment agency going from one low-paid job to another: care home worker,
shop assistant, school dinner lady, bakery worker and... hospital porter.
Obviously her experience with hospital portering interested
me the most. As a young journalist in 1970 she worked as a porter at the
Chelsea
and
Westminster Hospital
in
London. Then the foreign crew
was made up mostly of people from
India,
Pakistan and
the
Caribbean; today they are mostly from
Africa,
the Arab world, the
Philippines
and
Eastern Europe. Why? For the same reason: They are
cheap, willing and easy to exploit. The hospital has changed since the author's
last portering tour; the greasy red-bricked Victorian buildings have been
knocked down and replaced by a steel and glass PFI corporate fortress; like the
new development at my own hospital, the John Radcliffe. She does an outstanding
job of researching the life of a porter there. The observations she makes are
very perceptive and really strike a chord with me. There's the frustration of
working in a depleted department of a depleted NHS; unsanitary levels of hygiene,
inadequate equipment, training and tools to do your job. She understands that
portering has the potential to be a truly enjoyable and satisfying occupation
for all involved. She enjoyed her contact with the patients and the camaraderie
with the other porters. She realized how important the role is and says:
"The porters seemed like the
life-blood of the place or perhaps like the engine oil that greases the system."
We have a position and duty that can help patients at their hardest times: "Trundling
along, waiting for lifts patients like to chat and tell their operation stories,
worrying about what happens next, confiding about their families or the doctors
and nurses they liked and feared." She also became aware of the social
violence we have to experience from the Conformist Regime through the absurd
and inhuman status hierarchy: "We knew the snappy receptionists in some
clinics, the downright rude nurses in some wards, the very friendly ones
elsewhere, the places where nurses would let you stop for a quick coffee, other
kitchens where you would be chased away. An arrogant male staff nurse was the
worse: 'You, porter person, come here!' he snapped with deep disdain. It was
ever thus, the notch above in the hierarchy is always the class in any
workplace that gives you a hard time; the Kulaks, the foreman. This was
hospital life from the underside; where passing doctors belonged to another
universe, even the young medial students (they never held the door open for a
porter with a patient, letting it swing without acknowledgement). The nurses
straddled the two worlds, snooty ones placing themselves beyond communication
with porters and cleaners, the nice ones helpful and welcoming. You could bet
that those who were nice to porters were nice to patients too. One thing became
clear: people are recognized more by their status than their face. I was now a
porter first, myself second. Passing by in the corridors and wards, I saw
several consultants I had interviewed in the past; one of whom I knew quite
well. But porters are part of the invisible below-stairs world, the great
unnoticed. None of them ever recognized me". She sees that the pay
structure is "Byzantine". The contractor itself employs so many
agency workers that the staff are all paid differently for doing the same job.
The fact that the ancillary staff at the hospital were contracted out gave her
a feeling of being divorced from the health service family (as I do too). And
the agency staff were "twice removed". Agency staff also have no
contractual rights to the job they do; they can be hired and fired at will, which
explains why they're so beloved by the PFI cowboys. They also don't have rights
to things like negotiated pay deals, most are not unionized. Things have
improved slightly since Toynbee wrote the book. At my own hospital the existing
crew, including myself, were transferred over on the ROE scheme- Retention of
Employment- which allowed us to stay in NHS employment and merely be seconded
to the contracting private company. But because of the turbo-charged turnover
of the casualized portering service, we pre-contract staff are already in a
small minority working alongside agency slaves.
Toynbee feels very strongly that the situation could be
improved through proper funding and long-term investment in the cheap-and-nastyfied
public sector, and I don't deny that she's right; it would be a vast
improvement. But in reality the problem runs far deeper than she realizes, and
its solutions therefore have to be more drastic. This is an issue I address in
more detail in the other HPANWO blogs. If you are a HP or work in one of the other
so-called "menial and lowly" professions then quit walking round with
your head down and your shoulders slumped! Hold you head high and let your arms
swing! Polly Toynbee doesn't have her own website, but here's her Wikipedia
page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polly_Toynbee.
You can find out more about
Hard Work
here:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/991577.Hard_Work.
