Christmas preparations are going to be unusually rough for Britons this year: NHS nursing staff is set to start strike actions – amidst several other Union strikes. And that might be only the beginning.
December hasn’t even started yet, but it looks as though the next month will prove to be an extra stressful time for the UK: Coinciding with industrial actions by the Rails, Maritime and Transport Union, the Communication Workers Union and by teachers and university staff the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has announced two national strikes. The strikes are planned to take place on December 15 and 20 with an expected duration of 12 hours on both days.
It’s an unprecedented action for the RCN. In the 106 years since its founding, the RCN hasn’t ever gone on strike. But, as RCN’s general secretary Pat Cullen puts it: “Nursing staff have had enough of being taken for granted, enough of low pay and unsafe staffing levels, enough of not being able to give our patients the care they deserve.” The strike follows the result of a recent ballot among NHS nursing staff in which members at the majority of employers across the UK voted “yes” to strike action.
And they have all the reasons for voting this way: the RCN admonishes that pay has not kept up with inflation in the last years. Despite a pay rise awarded in summer, experienced nurses were worse off by 20 % in real terms due to successive below-inflation awards since 2010, RCN claims. The stagnating wages are causing people to leave the profession behind, resulting in even more workload and pressure on those remaining. “The work is more stressful and tiring, nurses are having to work extra shifts on their days off to be able to pay their bills and then becoming sick because of it,” Matt Smith, advanced nurse practitioner in a children’s intensive care unit in London, explains in The Guardian. “Nurses are becoming burnt out and there’s no reward for it.”
According to the RCN, last year has seen 25,000 professionals leave the Nursing and Midwifery Register – meanwhile, 47,000 NHS registered nurse posts remain unfilled in England alone. The worker shortage is further aggravated by a loss of European staff following Brexit. These insufficient staffing levels are compromising patients’ safety on a daily basis.
The British government, however, has deemed RCN’s demands – a pay rise of 5 % above inflation to ensure nursing remains an attractive profession – as not affordable. Formal negotiations with the RCN were turned down and thereby the ministers have chosen strike action, as Cullen claims. “They have the power and the means to stop this by opening serious talks that address our dispute.” So far only the Scottish Government joined the negotiating table and was thus able to pause plans for strike action in their country.
The Nurses’ strike is likely just the first in a whole series of strikes by NHS staff over the course of the next few months. While the RCN already announced that more strikes are on the horizon, if governments won’t budge, ballots for industrial action are already underway or planned in other NHS sectors. Junior doctors, paramedics, midwives and more might soon join the fight for better wages and staffing levels.
Add that to the current wave of flu cases throughout Britain, a not-yet-gone Covid pandemic and already stretched health services – and you’ve got yourself a perfect storm.
Image source: Colin Lloyd, unsplash.
