2 days ago
Nurses set to reject pay offer as further strike action looms
Nurses will this week overwhelmingly reject their pay deal, raising the prospect that they will join junior doctors on strike.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) will warn ministers that they must come back to the table over the summer to avoid a formal strike ballot in the autumn and additional unrest that will further set back NHS recovery.
However, public support for doctors' strikes appears to be waning, as ministers accuse them of holding the country to ransom and hospitals report fewer staff joining picket lines.
Resident doctors, formerly known junior doctors, are in a five-day walkout after rejecting a 5.4 per cent pay rise, which came after a 22 per cent increase last year.
Polling for The Times found that 55 per cent of voters oppose the strike, up from 49 per cent earlier this month, while 32 per cent support it, down four points from the second week of July before the walkouts began.
Tom Dolphin, the head of the British Medical Association (BMA), insisted that doctors 'don't want to be on strike', but said the walkouts were necessary because doctors were 'undervalued' and were 'leaving the NHS in large numbers'. He said that pay had to be 'enough to recruit and retain the best doctors'.
Ministers have refused to reopen pay talks and negotiations on working conditions collapsed in acrimony last week as ministers accused the BMA of acting in bad faith, while the union said the government had failed to make any concrete offers.
• NHS patients told to brace for strikes until Christmas and beyond
The BMA is holding out for a full return to 2008 levels of pay and Dolphin said salaries 'reflect the responsibility of these doctors' who were making 'life and death decisions'. He said: 'Even nurses who've had a pretty bad time [are] not as badly off as doctors in terms of lost pay.'
Nurses, however, are furious that their 3.6 per cent pay rise this year was lower than doctors' increases for the second year in a row. The RCN is holding an indicative vote on the pay award, which closed on Sunday.
The vote is understood to show 'overwhelming' rejection of a deal, with turnout likely to be well over the 50 per cent threshold that would be needed for industrial action.
The union is due to announce final results later this week with a call for ministers to return to the table. While the BMA is adamant that headline pay must rise, nurses are thought to be more open to talks on wider pay structures.
The RCN has repeatedly complained that nurses can remain on the lowest rung of the NHS pay scale for decades and is expected to press ministers for reforms that would allow them to move up the scale as they gain experience. If no progress is made, a formal strike ballot is likely to be launched in the autumn.
A spokesman for the union 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.'
It came after ambulance and other hospital staff in the GMB Union voted to reject the 3.6 per cent offer last week, with strike action now being considered.
The BMA consultants' committee is also holding an indicative vote over a 4 per cent pay deal it described an 'insult' to senior doctors. Dolphin said the vote was 'a testing of the waters to see where people are', but warned: 'We're certainly very aware already, even before we've done this ballot, the consultants are also very much down on their pay [compared with 2008].'
He told Sky News he did not recognise reports that doctors were being paid £6,000 a shift to cover for strikes, but said overtime rates were 'whatever they can manage to negotiate with their employer'.
