Nurses strikes in England could continue until Christmas if the government does not return with a higher pay offer for the NHS, the leader of the Royal College of Nursing said on Sunday, as health employers warned that further walkouts would pose significant risks to patient safety.
Pat Cullen, general secretary of the RCN, told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that the union would “absolutely not” pause strike action at the government’s request, after its members’ rejected a settlement that would have included a one-off bonus worth 2 per cent of their wages in 2022-23, and a 5 per cent increase this year.
Instead, it will press ahead with a two-day strike over the coming bank holiday weekend, which will for the first time include nurses working in emergency departments, intensive care units, cancer care and other services, taking the NHS into uncharted territory.
The RCN also plans to ballot members for a fresh six-month strike mandate. With doctors’ and teaching unions also considering further action, this means public sector strikes could continue till the end of the year — even as rail and postal sector disputes inch towards a resolution.
One of the longest running pay disputes, between the Royal Mail Group and the Communication Workers Union could be nearing an end, after the two sides said at the weekend that they had reached a negotiators’ agreement. The union’s postal executive will consider this on Monday and Tuesday and, if endorsed, it will be put to members.
Cullen said the RCN had no plans to co-ordinate the timing of its strikes with any fresh action by the British Medical Association, whose junior doctor members staged a four-day strike last week that placed intense strains on both emergency services and scheduled care. The BMA, which would need to give two weeks’ notice of any strike, also said there were no plans for co-ordinated action.
But Saffron Cordery, interim chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents health organisations across England, said that even before the BMA’s latest walkout, industrial action had led to the cancellation of more than 330,000 scheduled procedures.
Now, the NHS faced “a really ugly situation” that would pose “significant risks” to the public and would force health leaders to focus on managing strikes rather than tackling the backlog in routine care.
“It’s really clear to me that it’s not sustainable going forward for the NHS to manage strike action . . . We really need the government to come to the table,” she said.
Cordery added that ministers also needed to ensure that any pay deal was fully funded and should publish a long-promised plan for the NHS workforce to give people reassurance that funding would be in place for the future.
However, the government has signalled that it will wait for the outcome of votes at other NHS unions before making any further move.
Steve Barclay, health secretary, wrote to the RCN at the weekend saying he was “disappointed and concerned” that the union had announced its next strike plans without waiting for the full consultation of all unions involved in the NHS Staff Council — a body that brings together employers and staff representatives — to be complete.
Barclay noted that the RCN’s leadership had previously supported the pay offer, which he believed to be a “fair and reasonable” proposal. He urged the union to reconsider its strike plans and wait for the “collective outcome” of an extraordinary meeting of the staff council set for early May.
But Cullen said RCN members — who rejected the deal by a narrow majority — believed the deal was “neither fair nor reasonable”. Many saw the one-off bonus as a “bribe” rather than a solution to the long-term problems sapping the morale of the NHS workforce and leading nurses to quit the service “in droves”, she added.
Matthew Taylor, head of the NHS Confederation, which represents health groups, told Sky News on Sunday that employers understood the anger of nurses and doctors over pay and working conditions.
But he noted that unions worked together as a group on the staff council and echoed Barclay’s call for the RCN “to wait until we have the collective view of the NHS trade unions before deciding what to do next”.