The U.K. government said its latest pay offer to striking health care workers is final with one of the biggest nurses’ unions warning that walkouts could continue through Christmas without a better deal.
“It is a full and final offer,” Greg Hands, the Tory Party chairman, said of the proposal rejected by members of the Royal College of Nursing on Friday. The state wants to see what responses it gets from other labor groups balloting on the same pay package before deciding what to do next, he told Sky News.
RCN General Secretary Pat Cullen said on the BBC on Sunday that strikes would be kept up until Christmas unless better pay is offered. Members rejected the deal by a margin of 54% to 46%, about an hour after health care workers at a second union, Unison, accepted the offer by 74% to 26%.
