Britain could face a further wave of strikes across the NHS as nurses are set to reject Labour’s pay offer. The government offered a rise of 3.6% for this year, yet this was met with frustration after junior doctors and consultants were offered more. Nurses have now “overwhelmingly” rejected the independent pay review body’s offer, The Telegraph reports.
An internal battle between officials has left The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) labelling the offer as “grotesque”, warning that it would be “entirely swallowed up by inflation”. The results from the vote on the pay rise are expected later this week. Doctors are set to receive a larger increase than nurses, as well as teachers, prison officers and the armed forces. A union spokesman said: “The results will be announced to our members later this week. As the largest part of the NHS workforce, nursing staff do not feel valued and the government must urgently begin to turn that around.”
Resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, received a 22% pay increase last year, and were told they would be getting another 5.4% average rise on top of that this year.
The RCN vote on whether to accept the offer of 3.6% will include members working in the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
However, Scotland will be excluded after nurses accepted an 8% pay rise over two years, making them the highest paid in the UK.
Professor Nicola Ranger, the RCN’s general secretary, said last month: “Nursing is an incredible career, but despite being the most valued profession by the public we continue to be weighted to the bottom of the NHS pay scale.”
Speaking at an international nursing conference, she added: “I’m with nurses from around the world asking why it is our ministers in the UK who have once again put nursing at the back of the queue when it comes to pay.”
Nurses went on strike in the winter of 2022-2023 where they staged four separate two-day walkouts. Later in 2023, the union lost its strike mandate after it failed to meet the threshold of 50% in the ballot to do so.