Nurses’ £35m strike fund to fight 1% pay rise
NURSES are threatening to strike over the Government’s ‘insulting’ 1 per cent pay rise offer for the NHS. The main nursing union rushed to agree a £35million industrial action support fund and is set to ballot its members on a walkout. Meanwhile, Unison is urging the public to join a mass slow handclap on their doorsteps and balconies on Thursday at 8pm to protest against the planned ‘derisory’ increase. Ministers say the 1 per cent rise for frontline health staff is better than the wage freeze other public sector workers are facing but critics claim it means just £3.50 a week extra in take home pay for nurses. Describing the pay rise recommendation as the ‘ ultimate insult’, the Royal College of Nursing’s general secretary Dame Donna Kinnair told the BBC: ‘No nurse wants any form of strike action but we have to prepare. ‘We have spoken to this Government continuously over ten years and it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.’ The
‘Unyielding contempt’
RCN council held an emergency meeting on Thursday night and unanimously agreed to set up a £35million industrial action fund that could be used to compensate workers who lose earnings while on strike.
The union wants a 12.5 per cent pay rise for nurses in England rather than the 1 per cent recommended by the Department of Health and Social Care to the NHS Pay Review Body.
The country’s biggest trade union, Unite, is also considering a ballot on strike action after ‘the kick-in-theteeth announcement’.
Its national officer for health, Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe, said: ‘It shows an unyielding contempt by ministers for those who have done so much to care for tens of thousands of Covid-19 patients in the last year.’
The public sector union Unison’s call for a slow handclap against the ‘derisory’ offer is a twist on weekly applause given for the NHS during the crisis.
Its general secretary Christina McAnea said: ‘Millions stood on doorsteps and clapped for health staff who’ve given their all. Let’s now stand up for their right to fair wages.
‘Give the Chancellor a slow handclap for his miserly 1 per cent.’ Even Tory MPs have joined the backlash. Sir Roger Gale told Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘ More is needed. The way that this has been presented and handled has been inept.
‘We are facing exceptional circumstances and yes, I know that over a period of three years nurses have had a considerable pay increase, but that is not what I think the public wants in terms of recognition of a wholly exceptional situation.’
Former minister Andrew Percy said: ‘Ministers must act to provide a more generous award.’
But health minister Nadine Dorries, a former nurse, told Sky News: ‘We are coming out of a pandemic where we have seen huge borrowing and costs to the Government.
‘We do not want nurses to go unrecognised, or doctors, and no other public sector employee is receiving a pay rise – there has been a pay freeze.
‘But the 1 per cent offer is the most we think we can afford.’
She claimed nurses have received a 12 per cent increase in pay over the past three years and that the average salary is now £34,000.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock last night said the 1 per cent proposal ‘reflects the difficult financial circumstances that the country is in’.
Ministers were put under fresh pressure last night to reconsider the offer by the revelation that a 2.1 per cent pay rise had been earmarked for 202122 in an NHS ‘long-term plan’ document published in 2019.
Saffron Cordery, of NHS Providers, which represents trusts, said: ‘It is very disappointing the Government has said that a 1 per cent pay rise is all that is affordable when they know that the assumption was that the 2021/22 NHS pay rise would be 2.1 per cent and that this was covered by the NHS revenue settlement announced by Theresa May in June 2018.’
Labour health spokesman Jonathan Ashworth said: ‘It’s clear beyond doubt that Rishi Sunak has snatched away the pay rise staff were promised in the NHS long-term funding plan.’