RCN strikers and St. Thomas Hosptial (picture: Guy Smallman)
Nurses plan to follow up their rejection of the Tories’ pitiful pay offer with a hard-hitting 48-hour strike—and a new England-wide strike ballot. RCN union members will walk out from 8pm on Sunday 30 April, until 8pm on Tuesday 2 May.
In a major escalation from earlier strikes, the union says this time there will be “no derogations”—meaning no staff or wards will be exempted—and the strike will run overnight.
General secretary Pat Cullen also said the union would “move immediately” to ballot members across England for a nationwide strike. That means thousands of nurses that have so far not been involved in the strike could join it.
Cullen’s bold moves are an attempt to regain the initiative after a majority of RCN members chose to defy pressure from union leaders to reject the pay deal. But there are weaknesses in her plan. She says a new wave of nurses’ strike might last until Christmas— and she has ruled out the idea that RCN might strike alongside junior doctors.
Warning the government that action could last for months might put the frighteners on ministers, but what message does it send to low paid nurses preparing to ballot for strikes? It says the union expects they will lose thousands of pounds as part of the fight.
A far stronger message would have been to announce a strategy of longer strikes in coordination with the junior doctors. That would heap pressure on the Tories— and likely produce results far quicker than six months. It would also minimise the effect on patient care.
Already BMA junior doctors’ leaders have indicated they are open to such a move, saying “nothing is off the table”. RCN union activists that built the no campaign told Socialist Worker that the methods they used to win rejection would be needed again to win the coming strike vote.
Alan, a clinical support worker at a hospital in Sheffield, said, “At work, it can be tough to find people and get conversations going about the strike and unions. Hospitals are very hierarchical, and everyone is squeezed for time.
“But at every opportunity, I talk about the need to strike—and the need to go further than we’ve done. “Some people are very defeatist and say strikes don’t work. But others are out-and-out militants, especially on the pay deal.
“You really have to look out for those people and try to draw them into wider conversations on the ward.”
Alan is right. Health union activists cannot now take their foot off the pedal. Many unions are still balloting on the pay offer, and winning more to reject could open the way to a bigger strike. And everyone, regardless of union, must start planning for how they can support the junior doctors and help the nurses win their strike vote.
Brenda is an RCN union rep from Britain’s south coast. She spoke to Socialist Worker about why the wave of pay strikes has radicalised many nurses—and what the union must do now. “Our strikes were a real show of collective power. One of the main things was that you finally got to see people who have been locked away in their own wards since Covid.
“We were all swapping stories about conditions we were working under. But most of all, we all felt like we had a voice at last. “But there was also frustration. It had to come to this before anyone listened to what we were saying about unsafe staffing, colleagues burning out and the whole NHS at breaking point.
“The RCN is very traditional and sees itself as a professional body. But when we were on strike, our members started to realise that this is what being in a trade union is all about. “All too often, as individuals, we are stuck in our own worlds, trying to pay our bills, worrying about how unsafe work has become.
“But during the strike people had a collective voice, and the RCN started acting like a proper union. So that had an impact on us. “More than that, we all became aware of government hypocrisy.
“So people were politicised by the strike, and I don’t think that the union or the government will be able to put that genie back in the bottle.
“Everyone knows the government’s offer does nothing to solve the staffing crisis. So it does nothing for patient safety—which was the main reason most nurses voted to strike.
“I had a colleague tell me the other day that she had to do all the care for six patients—that includes washing and personal care, and all their medical care.
“She told me she went home disappointed in herself that she hadn’t managed it all. “I had to remind her that poor staffing isn’t a personal failure. We are dealing with the managed decline of the NHS, on the orders of a Tory government.
“We need to use the enthusiasm of the members to get many new union reps and good organisation on the ground.
“And, we have to say that this time we are fighting for full pay restoration.”
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