Strike affecting half of NHS England trusts as pay dispute continues
There would have been no pay rise at all for NHS staff without the unions’ action, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation says, though he urged nurses to accept the offer on the table as he counts the “heavy toll” of industrial action on the health service. Speaking on Sky News, Matthew Taylor said:
Obviously, we’d rather these strikes were not taking place. They come after six months of on-and-off industrial action, which has taken a heavy toll on the NHS.
We are relieved it’s only a one-day strike – initially it was going to be two – and we’re grateful to the RCN for putting in place a rising number of mitigations specifically agreed with individual hospitals in order to protect life-and-limb services.
What our nursing staff said was it was neither fair nor reasonable – it puts money in their pockets now but in the long term it doesn’t address recruitment and retention issues.
There were some elements of the pay offer that were attractive to our ruling council; for example around safe nurse staffing policy work that’s required in order for us to be able to move to a place where we have safe nurse staffing legislation in place.
Continue reading…Strike affecting half of NHS England trusts as pay dispute continues There would have been no pay rise at all for NHS staff without the unions’ action, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation says, though he urged nurses to accept the offer on the table as he counts the “heavy toll” of industrial action on the health service. Speaking on Sky News, Matthew Taylor said:Obviously, we’d rather these strikes were not taking place. They come after six months of on-and-off industrial action, which has taken a heavy toll on the NHS.We are relieved it’s only a one-day strike – initially it was going to be two – and we’re grateful to the RCN for putting in place a rising number of mitigations specifically agreed with individual hospitals in order to protect life-and-limb services.What our nursing staff said was it was neither fair nor reasonable – it puts money in their pockets now but in the long term it doesn’t address recruitment and retention issues.There were some elements of the pay offer that were attractive to our ruling council; for example around safe nurse staffing policy work that’s required in order for us to be able to move to a place where we have safe nurse staffing legislation in place. Continue reading…