Poor pay, conditions push UK nurses to walk out
Saeed Pourreza
Press TV, London
The people providing the nation with care, asking to be looked after by the authorities. Some of the tens of thousands of nurses who have walked off their jobs demanding better pay and conditions.
Hailed as heroes during the pandemic, nurses up and down the country, save Scotland, are staging two 12 hour strikes this week and next. Their representative body, the Royal College of Nursing, says they had no choice when the government rejected calls for talk on NHS pay.
The RCN says nurses are 20% worse off in real terms today than they were in 2010 due to successive below inflation pay rewards.
One reason for that concern is the number of staff leaving the profession. 25K nursing staff have quit the NHS in the past year. The government says the demand for a 19 percent pay rise is not affordable. The Unions argue the money is there.
The nurses’ strike is part of a wave of industrial action sweeping the UK this year with the strikers demanding better pay and conditions as a worsening cost of living crisis pushes more and more people into dire straits.
The Unions say the strike could be the beginning of a longer period of action if governments refuse formal pay negotiations and if future pay talks do not result in satisfactory outcomes.
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