Thousands of nurses from more than 55 NHS Trusts have staged new strikes in support of their pay claim and plan joint action with ambulance staff next month as their bitter dispute with the Tory government continues.
Members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) took to the picket lines in the first of a two-day strike after rejecting the government’s pay settlement which amounts to a wage cut in the face of soaring inflation.
Meanwhile, the GMB union has announced four new stoppages by ambulance workers and will join nurses on strike on February 6 which will be the biggest walk-out in this dispute.
The RCN has agreed to staff chemotherapy, emergency cancer services, dialysis, critical care units, neonatal and paediatric intensive care during the strikes.
RCN chief executive Pat Cullen said: “Today’s strike action by nursing staff is a modest escalation before a sharp increase in under three weeks from now… People aren’t dying because nurses are striking. Nurses are striking because people are dying.”
The RCN has been calling for a pay rise at 5% above inflation, though it has said it will accept a lower offer. But health secretary Steve Barclay has refused to negotiate with the RCN over pay.
Matt Tacey, a 32-year-old nurse who lives in the East Midlands, said: “To stand outside hospitals and not provide care goes against every grain in our DNA and it’s going to be around three to four degrees tomorrow, so the government has literally left us out in the cold.”
Nurses were joined on strike by thousands of Environment Agency staff across England. Members of Unison including river inspectors, flood forecasting officers, coastal risk management officers, sewage plant attendants and staff at the Thames Barrier took industrial action for the first time.
The Trades Union Congress has called a ‘day of action’ for February 1 against planned new anti-strike laws. Train drivers, teachers, university staff and civil servants are taking action that today, leading some Tories to characterise it as a “de facto general strike”.
That, of course, is far from the case but the pressure is building for a full-scale confrontation with the government over pay and new anti-union legislation because the Tories are clearly not planning to compromise.
Pictures by Peter Arkell of the large picket at St Georges Hospital in South London, where cars, buses, lorries, vans all tooted is support as they passed.