UK: Angry nurses plan strike until Christmas

A protester with a megaphone shouts slogans in front of Big Ben during a movement of nurses at St. Thomas Hospital in London, February 2023 (illustration photo). AP - Frank Augstein

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

In the UK, nurses' anger continues unabated. This weekend, the leader of the main union in the profession, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), announced a new strike movement that could last until Christmas, in the run-up to a new hardening of strikes at the end of the month, unprecedented in the country. The next strike on April 30 is expected to last 48 hours and for the first time will not spare emergency departments or intensive care or cancer units.

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With our correspondent in London, Sidoni Gaucher

The hospital staff will continue the strike, and do not mince their words about their working conditions.

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My job is to regularly take care of lifeless bodies, clean urine and feces, blood, vomit, clean patients' buttocks, lists a man. Everything no one wants to do. I do it 12 hours a day for 12-13 pounds a day.

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But I'll do it for free, too," he adds. You don't become a nurse to get rich, you do it because deep inside you there is this desire to take care of people. But when you live in this capitalist machine, when you have to pay rent, phone, transportation, groceries and student loans, what are we supposed to do?

And the problem has wider ramifications, as this other nurse explains: "In the last ten years, I have lost a fifth of my purchasing power. There is a shortage of 47,000 nurses in the UK, and if you add to that the low wages, the consequence is simply that people are leaving the country to earn better elsewhere. Because in the world, the shortage amounts to three million nurses.

The hospital body therefore rejected Friday, April 14, the 5% increase in salary and the bonus of 1,250 pounds, or 1.425 euros, proposed by the government.

You have voted to reject the NHS pay offer for nursing staff in England.

Next steps:
- Seek urgent talks with UK govt
- 48-hour strike from 8pm 30 April, without derogations
- England-wide statutory ballot to extend current strike mandate

Read more. https://t.co/axQ0oUuMtV

— The RCN (@theRCN) April 14, 2023

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