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%.
Junior doctors held a four-day walkout last week and are piling pressure on the government with a call to coordinate further strikes with other unions to increase their impact. The RCN is expected to begin its next 48-hour strike on April 30.
“Coordinated action in the future is definitely something we would consider,” Vivek Trivedi, co-chair of the British Medical Association’s junior Doctor’s committee, told the Observer newspaper. Options could include action at the same time as nurses or alternating dates, according to the paper. Cullen said for the moment the RCN did not have plans to act in coordination with the junior doctors.
Medical strikes are piling pressure on the U.K.’s struggling National Health Service, as well as the country’s ruling Conservative Party. RCN’s rejection dashed hopes that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s governing party could resolve the standoff before local elections next month. Hands also warned the Tories could lose 1,000 seats in the vote. Sunak has made cutting NHS waiting lists a top priority for his government.
Members of the RCN union will hold a national ballot on future strikes after the April walkout, rather than conducting votes at each hospital trust, the Observer reported. That could mean stoppages would affect twice as many NHS trusts, according to the paper.
“If that ballot is successful, it will mean further strike action right up until Christmas,” Cullen said on the BBC.
