Union chief had coronary heart transplant after catching virus whereas washing canine

Union chief Mark Serwotka is grateful he has a energetic retirement to look ahead to because of a coronary heart transplant operation seven years in the past.

Mark, 60, is retiring because the longest-serving chief of a significant British commerce union. Since 2000 he has been General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents 180,000 civil servants.

The orphan from Cardiff, adopted by a Polish-born miner, rose to the place after leaving college at 16 to work as a social safety clerk. But his profession and certainly his life had been jeopardised when in 2000 a virus broken his coronary heart.

The sickness took maintain after his canine rolled in a useless fox it discovered on a stroll, selecting up a virus. Mark caught the virus when he washed the canine. It all-but killed his coronary heart and for 2 years an electrical pump saved him alive. A coronary heart donor was lastly present in 2016.

He says: “I’m incredibly grateful to the NHS and to the donor, it’s given me a new lease of life. December was the seventh anniversary of my transplant. I still go to Papworth twice a year.”

But he provides: “I am in remarkably good health. I’m definitely sort of healthier and fitter than I was before. When you’re given a second chance, you want to live long and healthy and you think, you know, of the sacrifices that others will have gone through. I know it’s a terrible, sad thing but a lot of the people don’t survive as long as me.

“So I’m incredibly grateful to be where I am now. And in part it’s why I’m retiring, because I sadly know too many people who didn’t get a retirement or died very early in retirement, including family members.”

Re-elected repeatedly after profitable a courtroom battle in 2002 in opposition to union right-wingers who tried to cease him taking workplace, the charismatic left-winger palms over to Fran Heathcote, who has been elected the PCS’s first feminine General Secretary.

He is pleased with what the union achieved beneath his stewardship – pay battles, resisted pension cuts, saved jobs, battled anti-union legal guidelines and opposed the Rwanda exile plan.

And he’s livid that Tory austerity put public providers on their knees. He rejoined Labour within the Corbyn period after being booted out in 1992 and, not like some alienated left-wingers, desires Keir Starmer in No10.

He says: “There will still be lots of difficulties. Labour won’t solve all the problems of low-paid workers and underfunded public services. But a Labour Government is better than a Conservative Government.”