DONCASTER care workers’ determination to beat savage pay cuts and take a stand for the NHS as a public service is an inspiration.

Their vital work — looking after disabled and vulnerable people and helping them to maintain their independence — should ensure these staff the right to be treated decently by their employer.

Health workers are seriously underpaid and overworked in Britain generally, with many earning less than £15,000 a year despite working gruelling 12-hour shifts.

Though Labour shadow health secretary Andy Burnham has shown some willing to address the underfunding crisis afflicting social care, the Establishment has usually turned a blind eye to the long hours and low pay blighting the profession.

They are a disgrace — both because people carrying out the work deserve better and because care for the vulnerable suffers if the carers are worked off their feet and stressed out by a ceaseless struggle to make ends meet.

But the Con-Dem coalition’s bid to privatise and outsource as much of the NHS as it can get away with is making conditions in the sector even worse.

Caring for the vulnerable is a social duty and a public service. Illness and disability should not be seen as ways for dodgy firms to rack up profits.

Yet allowing private companies to bid for contracts to take on the role means they will be — turning the human relationship between carer and patient into a grubby financial exchange.

Care UK was only awarded the contract to run the service in Doncaster because it undercut the NHS’s own bid.

But councillors who handed it over should have paused to ask why. If Care UK thought it could run services more cheaply than the NHS, where was it planning to cut costs?

The immediate answer turned out to be its staff. Wage cuts of up to 35 per cent — for some workers amounting to a crippling £5,000 a year — are being rammed down the throats of a dedicated and professional workforce.

Few working families in the country could cope with such a sum being lopped off their annual income. 

The 150 Unison members affected have refused to accept the outrageous attack on their pay and conditions and have 48 days’ strike action behind them to prove it.

News that a further three-week strike — the longest yet — is in the offing shows that these workers have the courage and sense of solidarity needed to force their employer to back down.

It is no surprise that they are applauded in the streets when they hold their rallies. We can all learn from the Doncaster Care UK workers — from their staying power to the innovative tactics, now including a new fundraiser CD, which will bring victory. 

Acting together we can defeat Tory austerity, save our NHS from the private-sector vultures and build a Britain where hard work pays.