The High Court in London ruled on Thursday that a 48-hour stoppage by the UK’s largest nursing union was unlawful, cutting short the most extensive walkout yet over pay.
The decision will roughly halve the length of next week’s proposed two-day walkout, the first to affect NHS emergency and critical care, and came as four new rail strikes were called for May and June and unions warned of the stoppages lasting all year.
Lawyers for UK health secretary Steve Barclay persuaded the High Court that the second day of next week’s strike by members of the Royal College of Nursing fell outside the six-month window permitted for industrial action following a ballot.
The walkout is scheduled to begin at 8pm on April 30 and Mr Justice Linden ruled that plans to continue it until May 2 were outside the democratic mandate by one day.
RCN general secretary Pat Cullen said the union would ballot its members for a further six months of industrial action after this weekend.
The UK is enduring its biggest wave of strikes in decades as workers in the private and public sectors demand higher pay amid the cost of living crisis.
A series of new rail stoppages announced on Thursday came after Aslef, the main train drivers’ union, and the RMT transport workers’ union rejected industry pay offers.
Train drivers will strike at 16 train companies on May 12 and 31 and June 3, while RMT members will walkout at 14 companies on May 13.
Aslef said it had rejected a “risible” offer of an 8 per cent pay rise over two years, tied to reforms, while the RMT turned down a 9 per cent proposal.
Rail executives warned that the strikes would affect music and football fans going to the Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool and the FA Cup final in London.
Both unions also raised the prospect of the nationwide strikes continuing for the rest of the year, potentially taking the long-running disputes, which began in June 2022, past the 18-month mark.
The RMT is reballoting members for permission to walk out for six more months when its current mandate runs out in late May, and its general secretary Mick Lynch promised “a further programme of strike action”.
Aslef also plans to ballot its members in the coming weeks, as its mandate runs out in June, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Rail Delivery Group, which represents train companies, said the “unnecessary” walkouts would “heap more pressure” on an industry facing an “acute financial crisis” because of lower ticket revenues following the rise of homeworking and a fall in commuting.
The health service strikes have also tested the government, which said on Thursday it was “regrettable” that its dispute with the RCN had resulted in court action.
Welcoming the High Court’s ruling, Barclay said: “I firmly support the right to take industrial action within the law — but the government could not stand by and let plainly unlawful strike action go ahead.”
Downing Street added: “The government never wanted to take this to court. We did, indeed, try every possible way to avoid a court case.”
But, for the RCN, Cullen labelled the judgment “the darkest day of this dispute so far”, adding that while ministers “have won their legal battle . . . they have lost nursing and they’ve lost the public”.