Strike action that could potentially last until Christmas is currently being considered by UK nurses, the head of the profession’s main union announced on Sunday.
The announcement follows the Royal College of Nursing’s (RCN) rejection on Friday of the government’s proposed pay rise for NHS nurses, which consisted of a 5% salary increase and a one-off payment of £1,655 (€1,851). Inflation in the UK is currently running at more than 10%.
The strike would be unprecedented in the RCN’s more than one hundred-year history. It comes in addition to an already-confirmed 48-hour RCN strike beginning at 20:00 on 30 April, which for the first time ever will include nurses working in emergency departments and intensive care and cancer units.
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“We have strike action for the end of this month and the beginning of May,” Pat Cullen, General Secretary of the RCN, told the BBC on Sunday. “Then we will move immediately to ballot our members. If that ballot is successful, it will mean further strike action right up until Christmas.”
The UK’s cost-of-living crisis has led to a cascade of industrial action over the past few months, as workers in both the public and the private sector have demanded pay increases as they struggle to cope with the country’s soaring inflation rate.
