Nurses at a majority of National Health Service (NHS) trusts and health boards have voted to strike over pay, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said on Wednesday.
It comes as the NHS is struggling with high levels of backlog following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many of the biggest hospitals in England, all NHS employers in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and all but one NHS employer in Wales voted to join the action while some hospitals in England “narrowly missed the legal turnout thresholds to qualify,” the nurse union said.
The RCN said experienced nurses’ salaries are 20 percent worse off in real terms compared to ten years earlier, demanding a pay rise of 5 percent above inflation.
The union said the government must “signal a new direction” in its autumn budget announcement scheduled for Nov. 17.
It also said it has the mandate to organise strikes in the next six months and that the first actions are expected to begin before the end of this year.
The RCN said it will ensure the strikes are carried out “legally and safely,” meaning emergency intervention and urgent diagnostic procedures for the preservation of life or the prevention of permanent disability will be prioritised over industrial action.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay expressed disappointment in the union’s announcement, saying the nurses’ demands are “out of step” with the current economic circumstances the UK faces.
“We accepted the recommendations of the independent NHS Pay Review Body in full and have given over one million NHS workers a pay rise of at least £1,400 this year on top of a 3 [percent] rise last year,” the minister wrote on Twitter.
Barclay said he is “hugely grateful” for the hard work and dedication of NHS staff, including nurses, but said the “union demands for a 17.6% pay settlement are around three times what millions of people outside the public sector will typically receive and simply aren’t reasonable or affordable,” adding, “Labour have also refused to back this.”
Speaking to Sky News earlier, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said another problem with“massive above-inflation rises” is that it would in turn fuel inflation.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting accused the government of “unacceptable negligence,” saying Labour would have been “talking with the RCN and doing everything we can to prevent these strikes going ahead” if they were in government.
But he told BBC Radio 4’s “PM” programme he wouldn’t be able to meet the nurses’ demands either in current circumstances, saying, “the Conservatives [have] crashed the economy.”
Barclay, who got the job for the second time on Oct. 25 after being put in the role between July 4 and Sept. 6 owning to the recent shuffling of prime ministers, told broadcasters that he offered a meeting during his first week on the job.
RCN Scotland Board formally rejected an offer from the Scottish Government to give lower-earning nurses an 11 percent pay rise.
The Bank of England last week raised its base interest rate to 3 percent to tackle elevated inflation as economists are concerned about the looming second-round inflation as workers demand higher wages in a tight labour market.
The bank’s Chief Economist Huw Pill on Tuesday suggested during a House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee hearing that there may be more interest rate hikes in the coming months.
