A union chief has warned of nurses taking strike action this winter if the Government does not back down on pay. An initial ballot showed anger among the Royal College of Nursing's (RCN) 500,000 members over below-inflation pay increases.
Pat Cullen, the union's general secretary, accused Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak of being out of touch during a Tory leadership battle which has largely ignored public services, reports the Times. She warned that the Government was "sleepwalking" into a winter of NHS strikes.
Doctors and other health workers are also preparing for strikes over pay increases of 4-5% at a time when inflation is heading towards 13%. Ms Cullen said she would co-ordinate with other unions to ensure emergency services were kept running but admitted that efforts to clear the Covid-19 backlog of routine care would "absolutely be disrupted".
The RCN is traditionally considered to be a moderate union and has gone on strike only once, in Northern Ireland, since it was founded in 1916. Indicative strike ballots in 2021 attracted a turnout of 23%, leading health chiefs to assume the union was unlikely to walk out.
Initial results from Scotland, where both base pay and this year's rise are slightly higher than in England, show turnout at more than 60%, with a similar proportion backing strike action. This is well above the 50% legal threshold for walkouts. Similar results are expected in England in October.
Ms Cullen, a mental health nurse, said the results "clearly demonstrated that nurses can take no more". She added that she had never felt such despair in her 42 years as a nurse.
Strikes were "inevitable if we continue down the path that we're on", she warned.
