You are joining the unprecedented social movement that reflects the scale of discontent in the UK. Up to 100,000 British nurses went on strike on Thursday to demand wage increases amid rising prices and the public health crisis. This is the first strike since their union, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), was formed 106 years ago. The movement affects England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It comes at a time of rare social tension as Christmas approaches. From railway workers to border police, many occupations are set to go on strike by the end of the year, upsetting some Brits’ plans.
“It’s time to pay fair wages to healthcare workers,” “Staff shortages are costing lives,” read placards by strikers who gathered outside St Thomas’ Hospital in London on Thursday.
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Make up for years of scarcity
Nurses are demanding a pay increase of just over 19% to make up for years of shortages that have left the RCN with a 20% loss of purchasing power since 2010 and the Conservatives’ rise to power. A request deemed “priceless” by the government. In a UK in the midst of a cost of living crisis, with inflation at 11%, nurses’ representatives say their members are skipping meals, struggling to feed and clothe their families and ending up leaving the NHS en masse.
The strikers also complain about an increasing workload, in particular due to the lack of nursing staff. “I recruited a lot. (…) What I have noticed over the years is that it is more difficult to recruit nurses. Where there used to be 15 people applying for a job, now I sometimes have to post an ad several times before I find someone,” Ian Henderson, an ophthalmologist, told AFP.
The government refuses to take part in the negotiations
The Conservative government, struggling in the elections, is adamant, promising to legislate to reduce union power and refusing to participate in negotiations. But the nurses’ movement is challenging because public sympathy for free health workers is strong, national pride has lasted long and was washed away by a decade of austerity and then the pandemic. “We’re on your side,” headlined the left-leaning newspaper The Daily Mirror on Thursday, repeating a British population polled to support the nurses’ strike.
During the weekly Question Time in Parliament on Wednesday, opposition Labor Party leader Keir Starmer called the strike “a mark of shame” and called on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to negotiate an end to the strike that “will make the whole country breathe”. Rishi Sunak responded that the Conservative government was following the independent panel’s recommendations in its proposals for increases, and described the strikes as a “nightmare before Christmas” blamed on Labor for its ties to the unions.