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LONDON (AFP) – UK nurses are set to go on strike this week for the first time in their union’s 106-year history, insisting they are taking action as a “last resort”.
Up to 100,000 members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will hold a one-day stoppage on Thursday after rejecting a government pay offer.
Chemotherapy, dialysis, intensive care and high-dependency units as well as neonatal and pediatric intensive care will be protected.
But other services will be reduced to Christmas staffing levels, the RCN said.
Accident and emergency staff nurse Mark Boothroyd, 37, said the situation had reached a tipping point.
“The workload is horrendous. Nurses are burnt out, unable to provide safe care to patients. We are seeing harm to patients and putting patients at risk every day,” he told AFP.
Boothroyd, a United Union RCN member and staff representative, said Thursday’s stoppage and another on December 20 were about restoring “quality of patient care”.
Like other countries, Britain is beset by a cost-of-living crisis, which is driving up housing, food and energy prices.
RCN’s industrial action is part of a growing wave among public and private sector workers.
Healthcare unions say their members are skipping meals, struggling to feed and clothe their families and leaving the state-run National Health Service (NHS).
But persistently low inflation awards since 2010 have left veteran nurses more than 20 percent worse off in real terms, they say.
The RCN wants pay rises significantly above inflation which hit a 41-year high of 11.1 per cent in October. The government maintains that it is unaffordable.
– conflict –
Over the weekend, RCN general secretary Pat Cullen offered to “press pause” on the strike if Health Secretary Steve Barclay agreed to talks.
“I’m not going to dig in if it doesn’t come in. Come to the table and let’s have a discussion,” she told BBC television on Sunday.
But Barclay insisted that while he was open to negotiations on the broader issues, the pay settlement had been recommended by an independent review body and would not be reopened.
“We are working hard to ensure that patients experience as little disruption as possible from the strike”, the health minister wrote in the Sun newspaper on Sunday.
“But with the NHS already under pressure due to the Covid pandemic and the coming winter, the risks to patients will be significant.”
During the pandemic, Britons stood on their doorsteps every week to clap for the nurses and doctors on the frontline fighting the virus.
Now one in four hospitals say they have had to set up food banks to help staff eat.
“Nurses are struggling with a cost-of-living crisis to pay the bills…people are struggling to pay rent, pay transportation, some of my colleagues are single mothers — they’re struggling to provide and keep a roof over their heads. . for their children,” Boothroyd said.
Boothroyd, who works at St Thomas’ Hospital in central London, said poor pay meant newly qualified nurses now only lasted a year or two before leaving the profession.
The resulting unfilled vacancies put enormous pressure on the remaining staff, many of whom were reporting mental health problems from the stress.
He said the conditions were “appalling and cannot be allowed to continue”.
Despite assurances about protecting “life-saving services” and the provision of cancer care, Boothroyd acknowledged that the strike would affect patients.
But he said it would be a “short-term distraction” for the NHS to tackle long-standing problems, including long appointments and treatment backlogs.
“We feel that we have been forced to do this… as union representatives, we have protested, we have demonstrated, we have written to the government,” he said.
“We’ve done everything possible to tell them how bad this is getting and they haven’t listened to us, so a strike is a last resort.”
© 2022 AFP
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