Vet staff take unprecedented stand

Valley Vets staff in South Wales are taking an enormously brave stand in the first ever private veterinary practice strike in British history.

So far staff, including nurses, support staff and vets, are entering their fifth week of strike action, with their latest series of strikes set to end on August 31.

The striking vet staff are members of Unite’s British Veterinary Union (BVU) and are absolutely determined in their fight for fair pay and more affordable care for the animals they treat.

A striking BVU member, who spoke to UniteLive on condition of anonymity, said that over the years, staff workload has increased significantly while their pay has been continuously eroded by real-terms wage cuts.

They explained how every role at Valley Vets practices is facing an enormous amount of pressure, from clinical staff to receptionists and everyone else in between.

“In a typical day in consulting, you’ll see a new animal every 15 to 20 minutes for several hours,” they noted. “Then you’ll have a break, which never consists of putting your feet up and having a cup coffee – it simply means catching up on all the accumulated work you haven’t managed to do while facing the client. Then between consultations, there’s also operations and other tasks to be done as well.

“This has only become worse as pet ownership, particularly of dogs, has increased significantly since the pandemic, just as we’re facing a growing recruitment and retention crisis among vet staff.”

The striking staff member said they believed the receptionist role was among the most difficult – and poorest paid — jobs at Valley Vets.

“Over the last two years, our firm has raised fees by over 25%. So we often see clients who are already dealing with stress, often in an emergency with their poorly pet, then being hit with a very large bill that they weren’t expecting. Receptionists are on the very front line dealing with this client anger and stress. For such a difficult job – and such an important one – receptionists should at the very least have the dignity of being paid a real living wage.”

Indeed, receptionists and other support staff at Valley Vets are paid barely above the minimum wage. A BVU survey of Valley Vets support staff found that 80 per cent are borrowing money each month to meet basic living costs, while a shocking 5 per cent have had to turn to food banks to survive.

Meanwhile, VetPartners, the company that owns Valley Vets, is raking it in like never before. The private-equity owned firm recorded gross profits of £553m in 2023, after a £120m increase from the previous year. The company is also currently under investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for non-competitive practices.

UniteLive’s anonymous source said that what made Valley Vets staff the angriest – and what’s motivated them most to strike — is poverty pay for support staff on the one hand, with the company’s total obsession with increasing profits on the other hand, to the detriment of the animals they treat.

“Years ago, we never had to worry about clients exceeding their insurance limits,” they told UniteLive. “But with the relentless increase in fees, even if clients are reasonably well-insured, their pet may be ill for only two or three days but they’re burning through those insurance limits.”

In fact, the situation is so bad that Valley Vets staff are seeing more and more heart-breaking scenarios of animals being needlessly put down because their owners cannot afford treatment fees.

The Valley Vets staff member noted that vets are under pressure to charge their clients for every little thing, no matter how insignificant.

“Vets are often subjected to audits on ‘charge leakage’; they’ll be forced to attend seminars on so-called ‘confident charging’. It’s becoming increasingly embarrassing handing out the invoices that we’re forced to generate.”

They blamed the ‘pyramid scheme’ financial model on which Valley Vets and other practices owned by large private equity firms are built.

They pointed out how VetPartners was bought out by private-equity group BC Partners in 2018 for £720m, which then tried to sell on the company at the beginning of last year for £3bn.

“It’s the same story everywhere with private equity firms – they drive down wage costs and increase fees so that the whole operation looks profitable, then they leverage debt to expand it. You end up with this perpetual motion machine that’s clearly destined to fail, and you’re left with clients and patients and workers being crushed in the middle of it all, with private equity firms cashing out big time.”

Witnessing first-hand the injustices of both poverty pay and unfair fees may have been the final straw that spurred Valley Vets staff on to take strike action. But UniteLive’s source adds that their ultimate stand has been a long time coming.

“You don’t go from having workers in an un-unionised sector to suddenly facing strike action for five weeks without there being a very big management problem. It hasn’t happened overnight. For years we’ve faced constant window-dressing from our employer – that we’re all family; that we’re happy to listen to you – that just doesn’t match with reality. And when we do voice our concerns collectively, they’re totally ignored.”

So far, VetPartners has refused to negotiate any further with striking Valley Vets staff. But the employer’s stubbornness has only made colleagues even more determined.

“In one sense, we’re reluctant strikers. We genuinely didn’t want it to come to this. We want more than anything to be back in our workplaces fixing animals. But it turns out we’re also enthusiastic strikers because we’re done with being treated with the utter contempt the company has shown us.”

UniteLive’s source urged vet staff to follow their lead and join Unite’s British Veterinary Union (BVU).

“There are big problems in the veterinary industry, but there’s also power in a union, and we can only address these problems collectively. You can’t just think, ‘My workplace is no good’ and move on to the next employer. You’ll be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Fight where you stand, but don’t fight on your own – we can only change things by fighting together.”

You can read more on the latest about the Valley Vets strike here.

And you can find out more about Unite’s British Veterinary Union (BVU) – and how you can join – on the BVU’s website here.

By Hajera Blagg