NHS crisis: nurses to strike again

The Royal College of Nursing union is to strike again on the first May Bank holiday after its members rejected the government’s latest pay offer.

What’s surprising about the result is that Pat Cullen, the RCN general secretary, had urged members to vote in favour of the deal, advising them that the new offer they received from the government last month had vindicated their earlier strike action. 

Despite her prior recommendation, Cullen was quick to acknowledge the wishes of her members this afternoon, warning Steve Barclay, the health secretary, that unless he came up with a better offer, there would be even more strikes over the next few months. For the first time, the planned 48-hour walkout from April 30 to 2 May means many nurses will not be working in emergency departments, intensive care and other critical care wards such as those with cancer patients.

Cullen said: “What has been offered to date is simply not enough,” adding that Barclay needs to increase the figure and the RCN will be highly critical of any move to reduce it.

Threatening further extreme strike action is a historic move by the RCN, which is the world’s largest nursing union with more than half a million members including nurses, midwives, health care assistants and student nurses. 

And not one taken lightly: In a blog post only a few weeks ago, back when Cullen was hailing the government’s offer as a good one, she wrote that nurses in England would “lose too much” by rejecting the government’s latest NHS pay deal. Indeed, she warned members that negotiations with the government would not resume if the offer was rejected, and called for a “respectful debate” on the situation.

So the result will be doubly embarrassing for her, and it was a finely balanced one with 54% of members voting against the pay offer while 46% voted to accept it on a turnout of 61%. The offer included a one-off lump sum of between £1,655 and £3,000 to make up for last year and a 5% pay rise from April 2023. In contrast, members of Unison, which includes some nurses and ambulance crews, voted overwhelmingly in favour of the deal. 

As well as more pay, Cullen says the crisis in our health and care services cannot be addressed without significant action that addresses urgent recruitment and retention issues. On this Cullen is right – more than 40,000 nurses left the NHS last year, equivalent to one in nine. There are genuine problems with recruitment – not only because of pay – and these need addressing but it’s difficult to see what that has got to do with the government.  

Rejecting the deal is playing a high-stakes gamble, particularly coming while junior doctors are striking. Or maybe that is part of the RCN’s tactics? Indeed, there has been talk that the RCN and the BMA – which is demanding a ludicrous 35% pay increase – might join forces in facing the government down and striking at the same time. That would be crippling for the NHS and its patients. 

Now, Cullen will be hoping the threat of more strikes coming on top of the thousands of cancelled appointments already caused by industrial action will put the skids under the government. Ministers should certainly be worried: new ONS figures show that excess deaths are above the average in the two weeks after the first industrial action by the BMA. 

And it looks as though Cullen is already offering an olive branch, albeit a skimpy one. She has called on Barclay to get quickly to the negotiating table. It took him months last time to meet for face to face talks. Hopefully, he will move more swiftly this time. There must be room to manoeuvre. Lives depend on it.