Nurses re-load for the picket line as they rejected the governments pay offer
Last week members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) rejected the governments latest pay offer and have since announced a new date for strike action.
After weeks of voting, ministers, union leaders and health service bosses suffered a major blow as 54% of members of the RCN voted to reject the governments offer of a 5% pay rise this year and a cash payment for last year.
Following this, the nurses’ union announced a new round-the-clock strike lasting 48 hours, from 8pm on 30th April until 8pm on 2nd May – a bank holiday weekend. All services will be affected for the first time in history. The action will involve nursing staff working in emergency departments, intensive care units and cancer care.
The strike has been confirmed as an estimated 47,000 junior doctors finished their 96-hour strike in a separate dispute over pay at 7am on Saturday.
Pat Cullen, the RCN General Secretary, said the proposed settlement was ‘simply not enough’ and called for Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, to ‘increase what has already been offered.’
Ms Cullen said: ‘Since put talks in February, we have seen the pressures on the NHS continue to increase. The crisis in our health and care services cannot be addressed without significant action that addresses urgent recruitment and retention issues and nursing pay to bring this dispute to a close urgently.
‘Until there is a significantly improved offer, we are forced back to the picket line.
‘Meeting alone are not sufficient to prevent strike action and I will require an improved offer as soon as possible. In February, you opened negotiations directly with me and I urge you to do the same now.’
The ballot of RCN members, which opened for almost three weeks, asked whether they should accept or reject a one-off 2% salary uplift and 4% Covid recovery bonus for 2022-23 and then a permanent 5% pay rise from April.
However, despite the offers rejection, when the offer was proposed to RCN members last month, Ms Cullen said the talks had reached a point ‘where you know the other side won’t give any more.’
Against this backdrop, the RCN will now conduct a new England-wide statutory ballot to extend the scope and duration of the current mandate for industrial action, the new mandate is effective for six months.
Although, there was some good news that came out of last week as on Friday, Unison announced that its 150,000 health workers, including cleaners, porters, paramedics, as well as some nurses, would accept the offer.
Image: Manny Becerra