Nurses in the Royal College of Nursing union have rejected the government’s pay offer in England and will now go on strike over the first May bank holiday. The 48-hour walkout from 20:00 BST on 30 April to 20:00 on 2 May will involve NHS nurses in emergency departments, intensive care, cancer, and other wards. This will be “hugely concerning” for patients, the government says.
Members of the Unison union – which includes some nurses and ambulance crews – have accepted the pay offer. The award on the table is a 5% pay rise for 2023-24. And there is an extra one-off lump sum of at least £1,655 to top up the past year’s salary. Meanwhile, NHS junior doctors in England are currently staging a four-day walkout over pay, ending at 07:00 on Saturday.
For the first time, the RCN says this new strike will mean some critical care services, such as intensive care, will not be staffed on strike days – something which did not happen in previous walkouts. The government has said this amounts to an escalation in strike action, “based on a vote from the minority of the nursing workforce”. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt told the BBC the government had come a long way with its current offer, and urged NHS unions that are still voting to accept the deal because it would be “best for patients and best for staff”.
Healthcare bosses say further strikes will have an impact on reducing already lengthy waiting lists for treatment, which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has promised to reduce. The result of the RCN vote on pay was close – 54% voted to reject the offer, while 46% voted to accept it. The Unison vote, however, was overwhelmingly in favour of the deal.
‘Forced’ to walk out
Pat Cullen, RCN general secretary and chief executive, said the government “needs to increase what has already been offered and we will be highly critical of any move to reduce it”. She said that until there was a significantly improved offer, RCN nurses would be forced to go back to the picket line. Sara Gorton from Unison, whose members voted for the pay offer, said: “Clearly health workers would have wanted more, but this was the best that could be achieved through negotiation.
“Over the past few weeks, health workers have weighed up what’s on offer. They’ve opted for the certainty of getting the extra cash in their pockets soon.” A government spokesperson said the Unison decision “demonstrates that it is a fair and reasonable proposal that can bring this dispute to an end”. But it said it was “hugely disappointing” that the RCN had rejected the pay deal recommended by their leadership.
Krupesh Hirani, Labour’s health spokesperson at the London Assembly, said the RCN result showed “the strength of feeling among the nursing profession that working conditions in the NHS have deteriorated to unacceptable levels”. Hundreds of thousands of NHS staff from other unions are still voting on the same pay deal over the next two weeks. A Downing Street source indicated the government wanted to wait to see the outcome of the other ballots and that it was important to have a full picture before putting forward further steps.
Meanwhile, the RCN told the BBC its members were not looking to strike on the same days as junior doctors. A source from the British Medical Association, the union representing the junior doctors, also said there were no plans for joint action. Harry Eccles, a clinical nurse specialist on the south coast of England, voted against the government’s offer and said he was glad that other nurses did too.
“They’re using their voice to fight for our patients and patient safety and fight for the NHS,” he said. But Harry said the one-off sum offered by the government for 2022-23 was “going to pay off a few bills, and then we’re going to be in the same predicament”. And he was not impressed by the 5% pay increase for this year either, which he points out is still way below inflation.
Strike action is a last resort, he added. “The government is refusing to listen, to give us the respect and the time, and to even recognize that without staff there is no NHS.”
What is happening across the UK?
Nurses began strikes in December in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in the largest action of its kind in NHS history. Health unions in Wales and Northern Ireland are still in negotiations with their governments over pay.
There has been no industrial action by nurses in Scotland after they accepted a pay offer from the Scottish government that will mean a 6.5% increase from this month, on top of a 7.5% rise for 2022-23. The government announced a pay offer for nurses in England on 16 March.
Other strikes involving school teachers, railway workers and passport office workers have also taken place across the UK in recent months. The RCN says it will now reballot its members in England to see if they want to continue taking industrial action after the strike in early May. Unite and the GMB will announce the result of their ballots on the same pay deal in two weeks’ time.
