‘Prepared to protest’: CPE and NPA considering GP-style collective action
Pharmacy leaders have revealed that “work to rule” collective action is on the cards for pharmacy if the sector doesn’t get the “right answer” on government funding.
“All options” are on the table if the government doesn’t “find some funding to start to make good on [its] promises”, Community Pharmacy England (CPE) has revealed.
CPE’s NHS services director Alastair Buxton said that the negotiator will be considering what it will do when it gets “back into negotiations, hopefully in the next few weeks, with the Department of Health and Social Care (DH) if we don't get the right answer”.
“We need to think about all matters [and] all options there,” he told delegates at the annual Avicenna conference in London on Sunday (September 8).
“We can look at what the GPs have done in terms of working to rule on how that could potentially work for example,” he added.
From August 1, the doctors’ union has urged protesting surgeries to take any or all of ten “work to rule” protest actions, including switching off GP Connect functionality and limiting “daily patient contacts per clinician” to 25.
It remains unclear what “work to rule” collective action could be taken in pharmacy, as CPE did not provide any examples when asked by C+D.
And Buxton added that “potentially legal action could be something that could be considered as well”.
“Pushed to the edge”
Meanwhile, the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) yesterday (September 10) told C+D that pharmacies are “prepared to protest”.
NPA chief executive Paul Rees told Avicenna delegates on Sunday that the membership body is “thinking about issues around work to rule”.
“We will be thinking about that in the coming weeks, because we need to make the case very strongly,” he said.
He told C+D yesterday that the NPA does not “want to give a running commentary on how the campaign for fair funding will go and what further actions, if any, our members would be prepared to take”.
“But pharmacies have been pushed to the edge and are prepared to protest,” he added.
“Ring bells”
Rees said that the NPA is “focussing on [its] day of action on September 19”.
Campaign materials seen by C+D revealed that the NPA will ask participating contractors to “ring bells, blow a whistle or make other noises for two minutes from 9am to sound the alarm about the crisis being faced by pharmacy”.
They will also be asked to “hand out NPA-provided postcards to patients – to be sent to MPs and devolved nation politicians – highlighting the…loss-making activity pharmacies carry out” and record “all free advice” given to patients on the day.
The NPA will also provide stickers that say “we’re dispensing medicines at a loss” for pharmacies to place on prescription bags, it said.
The actions will be in addition to those carried out on the first day of action – including pharmacy teams wearing all black, pharmacies turning their lights off between 9am and noon and blacking out windows.
Previously, the NPA suggested that the September protest could see pharmacies sound an alarm by testing their alarm system at a set coordinated time.
