Welcome! In this podcast episode, I explore the question: how and why is the UK government policy on NHS workers’ pay dependent on social attitudes towards care? To answer this question, I discuss current NHS strikes and strikers’ perception of their work as undervalued by the government. Particularly, I focus on the social understandings of care that maintain a society that undervalues the very care work it is dependent upon, the attitudes that sustain an unsustainable system.
Special thanks goes to my interviewee, who I note remains nameless for privacy reasons.
Please see below for a list of resources mentioned in the episode, and some suggested further reading:
Brown, T. and Wickens, C. (2023) The NHS in crisis – evaluating the radical alternatives. Available at: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/nhs-crisis-evaluating-radical-alternatives
Dowling, E. (2022) What is care? In: The Care Crisis. What Caused It and How Can We End It? Verso, pp. 14-22.
Fraser, N. (2017) Crisis of care? On the social-reproductive contradictions of contemporary capitalism. In T. Bhattacharya (Ed.) Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression. Pluto, pp. 21-36.
Freedman, S. (2023) How bad does the NHS crisis need to get? Available at: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/how-bad-nhs-crisis