Rishi Sunak calls nurses’ 19 per cent pay claim ‘obviously unaffordable’
After learning that thousands of nurses may strike before Christmas, UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak declared that the salary demands of the nurses’ union are unaffordable.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), the union representing British nurses, announced on Friday that the nurses would go on strike on December 15 and 20 in order to demand higher pay. This strike action would add to a winter of industrial action and increase pressure on the government-run healthcare system.
‘What the unions are asking for, I think, is a 19% pay rise and I think most people watching will recognise that that’s obviously unaffordable,” Sunak said while visiting a doctor’s surgery in Darlington.
The strikes will put more pressure on Sunak as Britain struggles with a cost-of-living problem and an impending economic slump, with inflation hitting a 41-year high of 11.1 per cent in October.
The NHS, which has offered free healthcare at the point of use since 1948, is currently juggling a record seven million patients on hospital waiting lists. The emergency and accident rooms are similarly overworked.
In a dramatic escalation of the wage dispute raging throughout the NHS, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) declared on Friday that its members will hold their first nationwide strike on December 15 and 20.
In order to prevent a walkout, RCN general secretary Pat Cullen has encouraged Health Secretary Steve Barclay to “stop the spin and start to communicate” with nurses.
As the health system gets ready for the expected postponement of thousands of procedures and appointments next month, information will shortly be released on which areas within the NHS will be spared from strike action.
On strike days, “life-preserving” and “emergency-type care” services will be provided, according to a nursing chief, who declined to provide specifics on which departments would be filled if coworkers staged a walkout.
