Nurses were in a determined mood on the picket lines outside King’s College Hospital (KCH), roundly condemning Prime Minister Sunak’s refusal to even speak to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) about their well deserved pay rise.
Laura Duffel told News Line: ‘I’m a nurse and an RCN Rep and I sit on the London Board of the RCN as well. I think the way nurses are feeling at the moment, there is an appetite to escalate even further if we need to.
‘We can‘t continue the way we are. We have been backed into a corner, with the government not even talking to the RCN. It is just atrocious and they should be ashamed of themselves.
‘We need to be getting a bigger voice. There are a lot of unions out there and we need to be standing together.
‘But the RCN isn’t actually a member of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), so it is a difficult one. I am actually considering whether we need to join them, in order to get that bigger voice.
‘We all need to be standing together with this type of situation because if you look at the number of professional groups that are striking now, the government aren’t talking to any of them.
‘So I think there comes a point where we need to join together in strike action, and stand up and say enough. I would be for a general strike. I think it’s a really powerful message. It did the trick last time.
‘If you go back to the 1980s, when we were looking at the same type of general unrest in the working class, the people who are doing the hard labour in this country, Margaret Thatcher even knew that there wasn’t a fight there to be had with the nurses, and she needed to give us the right money. It’s a shame Rishi Sunak can’t see the same thing.’
Frontline A&E nurse Sarah Cline said: ‘We just have to keep striking to make our point because they haven’t listened to us for long time. Everyone else is striking and we have voted to strike. It’s not even about the pay. It’s about retaining staff, and getting more nurses into the job.
‘This is what the Tories promised and it is not happening. There are currently 42,000 vacancies in the NHS. This is why we are struggling so much, and not able to deliver the patient care that we want to do. That is the bottom line. What would be really effective is, if the other unions came out with the nurses.’
Wendy Martin, cancer nurse specialist said: ‘I’m really disappointed that the government won’t even come to the table and talk to Pat Cullen about nurses’ pay.
‘’The media are spreading loads of untruths, about how many people are dying because we are out on strike. People were dying before we came out on strike, because of staff shortages.
‘So we are striking for patient care and to make the NHS a viable option for the youth of today to think about joining as a viable profession in the long term.
‘I don’t think the government are ever going to talk to us, and Rishi Sunak made that clear over the weekend. He says he would like to give us some more money but he can’t. It’s not can’t, it’s won’t.
‘There is always more money for MPs’ pay rises, and paying for their friends’ PPE contracts when we couldn’t even use the PPE. So there is always money for what they want for themselves.
‘They don’t want to pay us any more and they want to paint us as being really damaging to patient care, when actually this strike is about trying to maintain safe levels of patient care, which you can only do if you have enough staff to look after patients.
‘The RCN needs to stay strong, because every time we reduce our pay demands, it gives them more of an excuse to not talk to us. They are just going to wait us out until we actually give up. The unions and everybody need to back the NHS. We are all going to need health care at some point.
‘I was hopeful that this week with so many people related to healthcare being out on strike, both today and this week, that it would force the government to sit down and talk. But they won’t, so we need even more people to send an even stronger message to make them sit down and talk over pay.’
Tina Chukuemeka, RCN, said: ‘If you look at it, this Tory government is not doing anything for us, so if we can kick them out we should. We need something to happen. We nurses are doing our best to fight, but still they are not listening, so something needs to happen definitely. We need them to be kicked out.’
At Great Ormond Street Hospital in central London, Lauren O’Neill, RCN picket supervisor, said: ‘We are ready to keep going. We are grateful for public support and we feel it. We are doing this to protect patients.’
There was a big picket outside UCLH later yesterday morning and into the afternoon, where they were singing and shouting slogans with megaphones and getting lots of support from passing traffic.
Ada, a rheumatology nurse said: ‘I want to say that the decent thing to do is to offer nurses a fair wage that will enable nurses to stay on the front line providing safe patient care.’
Monette, a paediatric nurse said: ‘The government is not going to listen, they want to privatise. Profit comes first that’s the capitalist’s priority. I want to see socialism. They keep telling us there’s no right time to strike, no right time for pay rises or patient safety and the media blames us for the lack of patient safety. I think the TUC should call a general strike.’
Chingford Aslef Branch Secretary Bill Rogers addressed the picket of over 100 nurses by megaphone.
He gave them a brief message of support, spoke about the cost of living and condemned the meters being forcibly installed into people’s homes.
Rogers said: ‘Everyone is coming out on strike over the cost of living – postal workers, busdrivers, doctors, civil servants, railway workers, teachers etc.
‘What is really required above everything else is an indefinite general strike to bring down this government.’
The response was an overwhelming cheer and unanimous support.
