Ambulance staff and thousands of other workers in Britain’s National Health Service will stage a new strike on March 8, even after nurses suspended their own industrial action and agreed to enter intensive talks with ministers over pay.
(Bloomberg) — Ambulance staff and thousands of other workers in Britain’s National Health Service will stage a new strike on March 8, even after nurses suspended their own industrial action and agreed to enter intensive talks with ministers over pay.
Other health unions were infuriated by ministers’ tactics and the Royal College of Nursing’s decision on Tuesday to suspend walkouts from March 1 until March 3 so that negotiations could resume.
The Unison labor group said as many as 32,000 NHS workers would join its latest strike, including health care assistants and cleaners as well as ambulance staff across most of England.
“Choosing to speak to one union and not others won’t stop the strikes and could make a bad situation much worse,” said Christina McAnea, Unison’s general secretary.
Teachers, meanwhile, said they would suspend their strikes planned for next month but only if “substantive progress” is made toward improving pay.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is grappling with labor unrest across swathes of the country. The UK government said Tuesday that public sector workers — including nurses, police officers, teachers and dentists — would be offered pay increases of 3.5% for 2023-24, a recommendation that will be considered by independent pay review bodies.
Read More: London’s Tube Drivers to Strike on March 15, Day of the Budget
Several labor groups were furious at the proposed 3.5% pay increase for next year. The Unite union called it a “sick joke” while the GMB, which also represents health workers, said it was “a disgrace” and also accused the government of trying to divide and rule by exclusively meeting the nurses’ union.
Nurses were given a pay rise for the current fiscal year averaging between 4% and 5%, though UK inflation has been in double digits for months. They had demanded an increase of five percentage points above inflation as measured by the retail price index — which would have equaled an uplift of more than 19% at the peak of inflation.
“The government and Royal College of Nursing have agreed to enter a process of intensive talks. Both sides are committed to finding a fair and reasonable settlement,” the government and the RCN said in Tuesday’s joint statement. “The talks will focus on pay, terms and conditions, and productivity-enhancing reforms,” they said.
Trade-offs
Separately, a health department submission on Tuesday to the National Health Service Pay Review Body suggests that nurses face a battle to get a deal on wages for 2023-24 that keeps pace with living costs.
Pay awards above 3.5% “would require trade-offs for public service delivery or further government borrowing at a time when headroom against fiscal rules is historically low and sustainable public finances are vital in the fight against inflation,” the department said.
An internal Treasury memo seen by Bloomberg said the government considers pay awards above 5% to risk fuelling inflation. The Treasury is telling departments to fund pay awards out of existing budgets and they won’t be given extra money for pay, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Strikes from other health unions such as doctors and ambulance workers are still planned for March, but the discussions with nurses could present a solution for these groups too.
“Hopefully, it can pave the way for similar negotiations with other unions planning strikes,” Julian Hartley, chief executive at NHS Providers, said in a statement.
“The past weeks have seen a worrying escalation of industrial action, which has hit patients hard. Both sides being committed to finding a fair and reasonable settlement is the glimmer of hope we all needed.”
(Updates with new strike date by NHS workers and context throughout.)
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