Thousands of nurses across Britain walked out on Wednesday in a new protest over pay, with no end in sight to a wave of strikes that has increased pressure on Britain’s overstretched public health system.
Two 12-hour strikes on Wednesday and Thursday affect a quarter of England’s hospitals and clinics. Emergency care and cancer treatment will continue, but thousands of appointments and procedures are likely to be postponed.
Nurses, ambulance crews, train conductors, airport baggage handlers, border staff, driving instructors, bus drivers and postal workers have walked out of their jobs in recent months to demand higher wages amid a cost crisis. of life.
Inflation in the UK reached a 41-year high of 11.1% in October, driven by sharply rising energy and food costs, before easing slightly to 10.5% in December.
The nurses union has been seeking a pay increase of 5 percent above inflation, though it has said it will accept a lower offer. The Conservative government argues that double-digit wage increases in the public sector will drive inflation even higher.
“Unaffordable wage increases will mean cutting patient care and stoking inflation that would impoverish us all,” Health Secretary Steve Barclay wrote in the independent newspaper.
The government has also angered unions by introducing a bill that will make it harder for key workers to strike by setting “minimum safety levels” for firefighters, ambulance services and railways that must be maintained during a strike.
The Royal College of Nurses union has announced two more days of strike action next month as the disruption to the economy looks set to intensify. February 1 is shaping up to be the most disruptive day yet, with strikes by teachers, train drivers, civil servants and university staff.
Ambulance personnel will announce more strike dates later on Wednesday.
Pat Cullen, director of the Royal College of Nursing, said the union had “extended an olive branch, in fact the whole tree, to the government” and urged health officials to “get together around a table and let’s stop the strikes to I don’t have to continue this until February”.
“I would say to the prime minister this morning: if you want to continue the strikes, then the voice of nursing will continue to speak on behalf of your patients and that is exactly what you will get,” he said. itv.
