The unions of nurses and junior doctors have announced new industrial action.
(Photo: Reuters)
London Great Britain is facing another wave of strikes in the public sector. After the around 500,000 members of the Royal College of Nurses (RCN) rejected the government’s wage offer on Friday, the labor dispute that has been going on for months threatens to flare up again, not only in the NHS state health system.
The now failed agreement with the nurses should also be the pilot degree for other professional groups in the public service. Now, in addition to the nurses, junior doctors and teachers also want to walk out again.
The RCN originally called for a 19 per cent wage increase for nurses, largely to offset UK stubbornly high inflation of around 10 per cent since August 2022. However, after tough negotiations, the union had agreed with the government earlier this year on a wage increase of 5 per cent for 2023/2024 plus a one-off payment of at least £1,655 (about 1,887 euros).
However, 54 percent of the RCN members rejected this deal, which at first glance is not far removed from the proposal of the arbitration commission for the public sector in Germany, as insufficient. The most important difference to the situation in the UK, however, is that the German arbitrators are proposing twice as long at 24 months.
Over the weekend, RCN Chair Pat Cullen threatened to continue strike action until Christmas if necessary. First of all, nurses in England want to lay down their work for two days from April 30th to May 2nd. For the first time, employees in the emergency room, intensive care units and cancer treatment are also to take part in industrial action, which would further exacerbate the severely tense supply situation in the NHS.
Chronic shortage of staff since Brexit
The healthcare system has not only suffered from a chronic shortage of staff since Brexit. More than 150,000 doctors and nurses are already missing. The gap could widen to 570,000 jobs by 2036, according to internal NHS estimates in England, if the negative trend continues.
The junior doctors of the British Medical Association (BMA) also stopped work for four days last week, which led to considerable bottlenecks in the hospitals. The approximately 47,000 young doctors want to continue their labor dispute and are demanding wage increases of 35 percent. The BMA justifies the enormous increase with the fact that doctors have had to accept real wage losses of around 26 percent over the past 15 years.
The government of the conservative head of government Rishi Sunak rejects the wage demands of the trade unions.
(Photo: Reuters)
However, Treasury Secretary Jeremy Hunt has rejected the demands, saying such large wage increases would further fuel inflation. “The worst thing we can do to young doctors, nurses, train drivers and teachers is to run the economy in such a way that they still face a 10 per cent increase in the cost of living a year from now,” said the Tory politician. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised earlier this year to halve the rate of price increases. However, economists doubt that high wage settlements in the public sector will drive up inflation significantly.
The conservative government is apparently banking on being able to sit out the wave of strikes and split the unions. Unlike the RCN, members of the smaller union, Unison, accepted the nurses’ wage offer. In Scotland, unions and the regional government have already agreed on wage increases of around seven percent. The railway workers, who triggered the nationwide wave of industrial action in June 2022, have also called off further strikes and returned to the negotiating table.
Although the ongoing mass strikes are an enormous stress test for the British health system, according to a survey by the polling institute Yougov, between 59 and 67 percent of Britons still support the workers’ industrial action. According to the NHS, more than 330,000 treatments have already had to be postponed due to the failures.
Life expectancy is increasing more slowly in the kingdom
More than 7.2 million Britons are waiting for treatment, around three million of whom have been waiting in line for more than 18 weeks. According to experts, the NHS crisis is also one reason why life expectancy in Great Britain has increased more slowly than in other countries over the past decade, according to a study in the “Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine”.
The economy is also increasingly suffering from the unresolved labor dispute. According to the state statistics agency ONS, the number of lost working days rose to almost 2.5 million in the past year – this is the highest value since 1989. Economists also blame the ongoing labor disputes for the fact that economic growth in Great Britain is stagnating and the British are the last of the major industrial nations to have only recently regained the level of prosperity from before the pandemic.
However, the long-term consequences of a chronic crisis in the public healthcare system are more important than the short-term growth losses. Unlike in France and Germany, older workers in particular have withdrawn from the labor market on the island after the pandemic. One reason for this is the ailing health of many employees. Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey recently warned that a fall in employment due to illness would have a negative impact on growth, inflation and interest rates.
More: Journey through an exhausted kingdom