United Kingdom: new hospital staff strikes for better wages
Protesters unfurl a banner during a strike by hospital staff, demanding better wages, in London, January 18, 2023. © TOBY MELVILLE / REUTERS
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
The United Kingdom is bogged down in strikes, with this Monday, February 6, the largest strike ever observed in the health sector.
Tens of thousands of nurses and paramedics are on strike amid a pay dispute with the government, which risks further disrupting an already strained healthcare system.
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With our correspondent in London,
Sidonie Gaucher
It is a mobilization that is both massive and reluctant.
Hospital
staff will be on strike again
, Monday February 6 and Tuesday February 7, to obtain better wages and working conditions.
But after two days of unprecedented strikes for the NHS (the public health system), within an
unprecedented social movement in the United Kingdom
, negotiations are still deadlocked.
This young nurse hopes that the mobilization will make the Minister of Health react.
“
Today is about bringing Steve Barkley to the negotiating table, it is about recognizing the skills of nurses and it is ultimately about the future of the NHS.
We are on our knees, morale is at its lowest.
It has never been so low and we need better working conditions and a fair wage
”.
“
It is also a question of safety
”
For David, a hematology and chemotherapy nurse, it's both a question of salary and working conditions.
“
We have suffered a 20% pay cut since 2010. The sector is no longer attractive to young people.
But it is also a matter of security.
With the shortage of staff, patients are not getting quality care or safe care
.”
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For Pat Cullen, a nurse and trade unionist from Northern Ireland who is leading the strike movement, “
the end of the tunnel seemed close, but the absence of negotiation on the part of the government only amplifies the movement
”.
On Wednesday February 1, the UK experienced its biggest strike in a decade.
Thousands of teachers, railway workers and public servants marched through the streets of London to demand better wages.
Who is Pat Cullen, a Northern Irish nurse and trade unionist who is leading the strike movement
?
Her profession as a nurse, Pat Cullen says she has it "
in the blood
".
The parents of this Northern Irishwoman are farmers;
caring is nonetheless a family affair.
Her vocation, she tells the
Guardian
, she draws it from the stories of her older sister.
A total of four of his six siblings are nurses.
Young, she begins her career in the mental health sector, young, she leads her first fight.
Outraged that difficult patients were deprived of their personal belongings, she wrote in 1983 to the management of her hospital to complain about a “
heartless
” policy.
She wins her first battle.
Another fight years, decades later.
Pat Cullen, a lifelong member of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), was appointed director for Northern Ireland in 2019. She then led a strike there for a pay rise, the first movement since the union was founded.
Victory again.
Having become general secretary of the RCN, the 50-year-old voted for a historic strike at the end of last year with a work stoppage.
A first in more than a century of the organization's existence.
This battle, too, Pat Cullen is determined to win.
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