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'To Save the NHS,' Nurses Strike in Half of English Hospitals
"Only negotiations can resolve this and I urge ministers to reopen formal discussions," said one labor leader. "Nursing staff are looking for a fair settlement that shows the government values and understands their profession."
May 01, 2023
Nurses and other National Health Service workers walked off the job in half of England's medical facilities on Sunday night amid an ongoing fight for higher pay and better patient safety in the United Kingdom.
The latest NHS strike comes after Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and Unite union members voted to reject the right-wing U.K. government's most recent pay offer, decrying the proposed 5% raise for this year and next as insufficient to offset the soaring prices that have resulted in real pay cuts and a devastating cost-of-living crisis.
Carrying signs with messages such as "strike to save the NHS," healthcare workers marched in London and other cities on Monday.
"I'm striking because claps and applause don't pay our wages."
RCN's work stoppage, which affects half of England's hospitals, community health sites, and mental health centers, is slated to last until midnight.
Ahead of the 28-hour action, a critical care nurse named Charlotte explained that she has "been so torn" by RCN's decision to strike. However, she said, "I know that this is the right thing to do for our patients, their loved ones, for ourselves, for our colleagues, and for the future of the NHS."
"I'm striking because claps and applause don't pay our wages," she continued. "They don't provide incentives for people to come into the profession, they don't improve staffing or patient safety."
"We are a kind, caring, and compassionate profession. We don't want that light to fade," she added. "We're striking and fighting to keep that compassion alive for our patients and for our NHS."
\u201c"Claps and applause don't pay our wages...don't provide incentives for people to come into the profession...don't improve staffing or patient safety."\n\nCharlotte is joining #RCNStrike action for reasons all too familiar to the nursing profession. \n\nRetweet to demand change.\u201d— The RCN (@The RCN) 1682856196
NHS England warned patients to expect "disruptions and delays to services," noting that staffing levels in some areas would be "exceptionally low, lower than on previous strike days," including the massive walkouts in December, January, and February.
According to BBC News, the current strike marks the first time RCN members have "walked out of all areas, including intensive care," but the union has agreed on "some last-minute exemptions so nurses could be pulled off the picket line to ensure life-preserving care was provided."
As the outlet reported:
Around a quarter of trusts involved in the strike have been given extra exemptions for services such as transplant and cardiac care—to allow them to call in some striking nurses because they have not been able to find other staff to fill the rotas.
This is to ensure a minimal level of cover—not normal staffing—as the RCN has to abide by trade union rules to ensure life-preserving care can be provided during a walkout.
In previous walkouts, services such as intensive care, chemotherapy, and dialysis have been excluded from strike action.
RCN general secretary Pat Cullen lamented that a strike was necessary and placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his fellow Tories.
"Only negotiations can resolve this and I urge ministers to reopen formal discussions" with RCN, Cullen said Sunday in a statement. "Nursing staff are looking for a fair settlement that shows the government values and understands their profession."
"We appear a long way from that currently, but I remind ministers it is entirely in their gift," the labor leader added.
The current strike comes ahead of a key Tuesday meeting between several healthcare workers' unions, cabinet ministers, and NHS administrators. While RCN and Unite have condemned the government's offer as inadequate, other unions have voted to accept it, with Unison leader Sara Gorton recently calling the proposed 5% wage increase "the best that could be achieved through negotiation."
Given that some nurses have been forced to rely on food banks, RCN is demanding a pay hike of 5% above inflation. Meanwhile, Britain's Enough Is Enough campaign against neoliberalism on Monday tweeted that lawmakers on the receiving end of "a 32% pay rise since 2010" and subsidized meals are "in no position to lecture a nurse who, since 2010, earns £5,000 less in real-terms about pay restraint."
\u201cIf you're an MP who's had a 32% pay rise since 2010, and have your meals subsidised by the taxpayer, you're in no position to lecture a nurse who, since 2010, earns \u00a35,000 less in real-terms about pay restraint. There's plenty of money; it's just going to the wrong places.\u201d— Enough is Enough (@Enough is Enough) 1682935347
RCN's walkout was supposed to continue through Tuesday night, but a High Court judge ruled last week that the union's original plans would be unlawful due to the expiration of its six-month mandate for action.
"It is the darkest day of this dispute so far—the government taking its own nurses through the courts in bitterness at their simple expectation of a better pay deal," Cullen said in response to the ruling. "Nursing staff will be angered but not crushed by today's interim order. It may even make them more determined to vote in next month's reballot for a further six months of strike action."
Unite, meanwhile, is not facing the same legal constraints.
On Monday, Unite members at the Yorkshire ambulance service and Guy's and St. Thomas' NHS Trust in central London walked off the job, with the latter demonstrating in the capital, BBC News reported. On Tuesday, Unite members at South Central, South East Coast, and West Midlands ambulance trusts as well as workers at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust and Pathology Partnership, East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, and Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust plan to strike.
Unite leader Onay Kasab told BBC that if U.K. Health Secretary Steve Barclay tries to impose the government's pay offer, the union will take further action.
"We will ballot, and where we have current mandates—some of them lasting up to September—then we will continue taking action, and we will escalate," said Kasab.
The struggle over the future of the NHS comes as the House of Lords proceeds with its third and final reading of the Tories' so-called Strikes Bill. The legislation, already approved by the House of Commons, threatens to take away the right of nurses, ambulance workers, teachers, firefighters, rail workers, and others to strike.
Progressive critics argue that the proposal to fire striking public sector workers who refuse to comply with a mandatory return-to-work notice amounts to a "pay cut and forced labor bill" and would constitute a "gross violation of international law."
During a recent speech denouncing the anti-strike legislation, left-wing Labour Party MP Zarah Sultana said that the bill is about "shifting the balance of power: weakening the power of workers and making it easier for bosses to exploit them and for the government to ignore them."
Enough Is Enough, for its part, has stated: "You're either with nurses, teachers, firefighters, and frontline workers. Or you're with the Tory government. It's time for everyone to pick a side."
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UK Nurses, Health Workers Stage Largest NHS Strike in Nation's History
"They aren't just fighting for themselves—they're fighting for the NHS," said the Enough Is Enough campaign.
Feb 06, 2023
Condemning the United Kingdom's Conservative-controlled government for putting "patients at risk" by refusing to pay nurses fairly and forcing healthcare providers out of the profession, tens of thousands of nurses and ambulance workers joined forces on Monday to stage the largest work stoppage in the history of the venerated National Health Service.
The workers, who along with teachers and other public and private sector employees have gone on several strikes separately over the past several months, are calling on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government to return to the bargaining table with unions including the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Unite, and GMB and negotiate higher wages and better working conditions.
The unions initially called for a pay raise of 5% above inflation, which stood at 9.2% in December, but were offered a raise of just 4.75% on average. The nation's 14 health unions have rejected the Tories' calls for them to accept the offer.
Hospital executives have also called on the government to reopen negotiations for their workers, who earn less than £30,000 ($36,000) per year in the case of newly qualified nurses. Paramedics take home salaries in the low £30,000 range, while specialist nurses earn roughly £45,000.
Ahead of Monday's strike, 100,000 members of the RCN signed an open letter warning that years of low pay have driven tens of thousands of nurses to leave the profession, including 25,000 over the last year—contributing to long waits for care and harming patient safety.
"The NHS is the bedrock of modern Britain," said the nurses. "And it is crumbling. Nursing staff make up more than half of the NHS workforce, and they are pushed beyond their limits. Care is not safe and the public pays the price. On behalf of the nursing profession, I implore you to see sense. Protect nursing to protect the public."
A number of signs on picket lines across Britain on Monday alluded to patient safety.
\u201cUp the striking ambulance workers! \ud83d\ude91\n\n\ud83d\udcf8 @GMBCampaigns picket line in Gateshead today\u201d— Enough is Enough (@Enough is Enough) 1675689572
Officials in Sunak's government have focused on the disruption to healthcare the strikes could cause, with Health Minister Steve Barclay saying, "Strikes by ambulance and nursing unions this week will inevitably cause further delays for patients who already face longer waits due to the Covid backlogs."
One striking worker on a picket line in London held a sign reading, "Strikes are meant to be disruptive."
Not all ambulance workers are going on strike at the same time and emergency calls are still being answered, France24 reported, and about a third of nurses in the U.K. will not be on strike this week.
RCN nurses will continue their strike on Tuesday, while ambulance workers will stage a second work stoppage on Friday and physiotherapists plan to walk out on Thursday.
"They aren't just fighting for themselves—they're fighting for the NHS," said the Enough Is Enough campaign, a grassroots movement in the U.K. that has been leading the call for the government to address the cost-of-living crisis in the country and demanding Sunak's government "tax the rich" to ensure fair wages for workers.
\u201cSupport your local nurses! \ud83d\udc4a\n\nThousands of nurses are on strike across England today.\n\nThey aren\u2019t just fighting for themselves \u2013 they\u2019re fighting for the NHS.\n\nFind a picket line near you: https://t.co/wm7nkfgPyP\u201d— Enough is Enough (@Enough is Enough) 1675671085
About 500,000 U.K. workers, largely in the public sector, have held walkouts since last summer. Last week about 300,000 educators went on strike with the support of 59% of Britons despite the fact that the walkout forced an estimated 85% of schools to close.
Last month, a poll by The Observer found that about 57% of people supported the planned strike by nurses and 52% were in favor of ambulance workers walking out to demand fair pay.
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'We Are Going to Win': UK Workers Launch Largest Coordinated Strike in More Than a Decade
"We are the working class, and we are back," said one union leader. "We are here, we are demanding change, we refuse to be bought."
Feb 01, 2023
With organizers saying it's entirely within the power of the United Kingdom's Conservative government to ensure public sector employees are paid fairly, roughly half a million workers walked out on Wednesday in the country's largest coordinated strike in more than a decade.
About 300,000 of the striking employees are educators, and they were joined by civil servants, railroad workers, university professors, London bus drivers, museum workers, and border officials, among others, with 59% of Britons telling YouGov in a recent poll that they supported the walkout.
The strong support comes even as an estimated 85% of schools across the U.K. were closed on Wednesday. Students and parents stood on picket lines alongside teachers, whose wages have not kept up with inflation and who are struggling to teach in schools where per-pupil spending for the 2024-25 school year is now expected to be 3% lower than it was in 2010.
\u201cMassive turnout in London today to support striking workers \ud83d\udc4a\n\nThe message to the government is clear: \n\n#EnoughlsEnough \n\nhttps://t.co/6qQEc61CzJ\u201d— Enough is Enough (@Enough is Enough) 1675255443
"It's partly about pay, which has been reduced by 11% over the last 10 years," Jon Voake, a drama teacher in South Gloucestershire, toldThe Guardian. "But it's also about how our workload's going up. We're all working with bigger groups. Children's education is going to suffer and enough is enough."
In the most economically deprived parts of the country, the National Education Union said, teachers' pay has gone down by more than 20% since 2010 as the rate of inflation in the U.K. stands at 10.5%—"the highest among the G7 group of advanced economies," according to Al Jazeera.
"We're struggling," a London teacher named Mehnaz told Tribune magazine last October. "Many of us are living in cold homes because we need to save wherever we can... I know colleagues who are worried about how they'll pay their rent or their mortgage, or how they'll be able to afford childcare when they're at work because their children's schools are also having to reduce hours and close earlier than they previously did."
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) says that the average public sector worker in the U.K. now has $250 less per month than they did in 2010, accounting for inflation. A graph the organization shared on social media as the workers walked out showed that teachers' real compensation is now far lower than the range among other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
\u201cEngland primary teachers' real pay vs other OECD countries. \n\nThis is why teachers are on strike.\u201d— Trades Union Congress (@Trades Union Congress) 1675260664
A 5% pay raise offered to public sector workers last year is actually a 7% pay cut when accounting for soaring inflation, union leaders say.
The walkout comes a day after members of Parliament passed an anti-strike law that would enforce "minimum service levels" in a railroad sector and emergency services, threatening workers with termination if they take part in a work stoppage. The bill still needs to pass in the House of Lords before becoming law. The TUC has said it could take the government to court over the proposal, which TUC assistant general secretary Kate Bell told The Guardian is "unnecessary, unfair, and almost certainly illegal."
Ambulance drivers and nurses are reportedly planning to stage a work stoppage in the coming days.
Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told public health workers on Monday, "I would love, nothing more would give me more pleasure than, to wave a magic wand and have all of you paid lots more"—but organizers and labor advocates on Wednesday said Sunak's government simply needs to change its tax policies to mitigate the cost-of-living crisis.
"We just need a fair taxation system," John McDonnell, a Labour MP former shadow chancellor of the exchequer, told The Guardian, calling on the Tories to tax capital gains at the same level of income to pay for raises. "The issue at the moment is that we seem to have a government that is redistributing wealth upwards."
Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union, toldThe Guardian that the Tories have claimed it would cost £29 billion ($35 billion) to give raises to public sectors, while the actual amount is about £10 billion ($12 billion).
"And £10 billion in an economy like ours can easily be found," said Serwotka.
Mick Lynch, secretary general of the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers, rallied thousands of teachers outside Downing Street in London.
"We are the working class, and we are back," said Lynch. "We are here, we are demanding change, we refuse to be bought, and we are going to win for our people on our terms."
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