Underpaid, Overworked UK Nurses Stage Historic Strike

Nurses across much of the UK launched a historic strike on Thursday, as they walked out of hospitals and onto picket lines after several years of falling pay and declining standards left the country’s nationalized health care system in a state of crisis, Rob Picheta and Anna Cooban reported for CNN.

Photo Insert: It is the largest strike in the RCN’s 106-year history.

As many as 100,000 members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) – the UK’s biggest nursing union – are taking industrial action in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, in the latest and most unprecedented of a wave of strikes that has swept Britain this winter.

It is the largest strike in the RCN’s 106-year history. But it comes after several years of hardship for employees of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), a revered but beleaguered institution that is straining due to staffing shortfalls, sky-high demand and stretched funding.

Labor leader Keir Starmer attacked Rishi Sunak on the strike during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, telling him that “the whole country would breathe a sigh of relief” if he halted the strike by striking a deal with the RCN. The industrial action was a “a badge of shame for this government,” Starmer said.

The RCN is calling for a pay rise of 5% above retail inflation, which on current figures amounts to a 19% hike, and for the government to fill a record number of staff vacancies that, it argues, is jeopardizing patient safety. Steve Barclay, the UK’s health secretary, told CNN in a statement earlier this week that their demand is “not affordable.”

The standoff follows years of disputes over the level of pay for NHS employees. Nurses’ pay dropped 1.2% every year between 2010 and 2017 once inflation was taken into account, according to the Health Foundation, a UK charity that campaigns for better health and health care, BBC News, Associated Press (AP), and Reuters also reported.

For the first three of those years, their pay was frozen. Earlier this year, the RCN rejected an offer by the government to increase nurses’ pay by a minimum of £1,400 ($1,707) a year, which amounted to an average rise of 4.3%, well below the rate of inflation.

The rejection came as the number of patients waiting for care has skyrocketed, a trend that has been exacerbated by the pandemic.

A record 7.2 million people in England – more than one in eight residents – are currently waiting for treatment, according to the British Medical Association. Seven years ago, the figure was 3.3 million.

WEEKLY FEATURE : MVP Group Keeps Lights On During Pandemic