UK nurses call unprecedented strike in December

The UK nurses union called a two-day strike in December to demand salary improvementsan unprecedented action in its 106-year history that comes in the midst of a public health crisis, in a country hit by growing protests.

Nurses of England, Wales and Northern Ireland they will stop working on December 15 and 20announced this Friday the union Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

“Nurses are fed up with being ignored, with low pay and understaffing, with not being able to give our patients the care they deserve,” union general secretary Pat Cullen said in a statement. release.

“Unless we do this, we don’t see any prospect of things changing anytime soon,” RCN England director Patricia Marquis told Sky News, apologizing to patients who see operations or treatments cancelled.

The strike will take place against the backdrop of a growing cost-of-living crisis that the RCN says is making it difficult for its members to feed their families and pay bills.

The union is demanding a wage increase above historical inflation of more than 11 percent.

In recent months the United Kingdom has been the scene of a multiplication of strikes in many sectors.

The mobilization of the nurses will be interspersed with the first of a series of stoppages in the national railways and the postal service will carry out new stoppages on Christmas Eve.

Health Minister Steve Barclay declared himself “hugely grateful for the hard work and dedication” of the nurses and regretted the strike, assuring that disruptions will be minimized and ensuring that emergency services continue to function.

“These are difficult times for everyone and the economic situation makes the RCN’s demands, which according to current figures involve a 19.2% wage increase, at a cost of £10 billion ($12 billion) a year, impossible to meet.” afford,” he said.

But his door is still open, he added in a tweet, to discuss with the RCN “how to improve the working life of nurses.”

The RCN denounces that the salaries of nurses have fallen by 20% in real terms since 2010, due to successive increases under inflation.

In Scotland, the union called off calling after the regional self-government reopened bargaining offering increases of 11.3% for the lowest wages and an average increase of 7.5%.

Health in crisis, “exhausted” nurses

British public health officials said in September that some nurses began skipping meals to feed and clothe their children and were finding it difficult to pay rising transport costs.

One in four hospitals in England have set up food banks for their staff, according to NHS Providers, which represents hospital groups.

We are exhausted. We are fed up. We need a raise to live,” Ameera, a London hospital nurse who voted in favor of the strike, told AFP.

For Ameera, who did not want to give her last name, “the British government is playing with the health of patients by not raising wages.”

The strike comes at a time when the revered National Health Service (NHS) has suffered from underfunding for years.

The government of Rishi Sunak announced this month a £3.3bn increase in budgets for the next two years, mainly aimed at reducing the long waiting lists patients have faced since the pandemic for medical tests, including those related to cancer, as well as as routine and emergency treatments.

According to the RCN, there are 47,000 unfilled nursing positions in England, partly due to “poor pay”.

Many nurses – the majority – and European nurses, led by the Spanish, left the United Kingdom as a result of the Brexitwhich ended the system that allowed them to count their British experience in their home countries.

More than seven million people were waiting for treatment in hospitals in England in September, a record number since this indicator was created in 2007.

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