NURSES are ‘not afraid to strike’ over promised pay upgrades, the Royal College of Nursing union warned James Murray, the new Labour Health Secretary yesterday, challenging Keir Starmer’s Labour government to fully fund the pay review.
Professor Nicola Ranger, RCN general secretary, said that nursing was the ‘absolute backbone of this country’, and warned that her union would be ‘absolutely clear and unapologetic’ in holding employers and the government to account.
‘We expect our profession to be sitting at band six,’ she added. ‘We expect a period of consolidation… but we want the staff nurse role to sit as band six. We will be looking at the evidence!.
She also declared that she is ‘really, really clear’ that strikes could be launched against ‘outlier’ NHS trusts which try to thwart the review.
‘We are going to be very bold and strong on that,’ she said. ‘It’s not for the trust to worry where the money comes from – that’s for the government to agree and sort out, and it’s for the trust to be fair to their nurses, simple as that!
‘And if they don’t, we will take action against them.’
Band five nurses are entry-level roles for newly qualified registered nurses under Labour’s NHS Agenda for Change pay system.
Ex-Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced in February that all band five nurses in England would be eligible to have their pay grade reviewed, with the government providing funding for employers to cover salary increases.
While welcoming the review, the union demanded its implementation now, as some staff spend decades, and sometimes their whole career, at band five, despite gaining the skills and responsibilities of staff further up the pay scale.
Prof Ranger said the RCN expected the ‘final plan’ on how the review would be carried out in the coming weeks. It would be a ‘tough challenge’ for the new Health Secretary.
‘This is the best opportunity nursing has had for decades, because this money is not going to be coming from those organisations’ budget, it is going to be coming from the government. This is the first time that we can start to elevate nursing.’
She added: ‘We’ve come up with a scheme where, for the first time, nursing is singled out, therefore we want to give it a chance. Both the NHS, the Department of Health, and us have to enter this with good faith, that is the spirit in which we will be starting this scheme.
‘But we need to be really, really clear, we are deciding and agreeing to do that, but that does not mean that we are afraid to strike.’
However, new figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) yesterday revealed the deteriorating UK economic crisis where the unemployment rate has unexpectedly gone up while the number of job vacancies has fallen to its lowest level in five years. This is as the initial impact of the Iran war on firms starts to be felt.
The unemployment rate rose slightly to 5% in the three months to March, from 4.9% in the three months to February.
Following the latest surge in UK government borrowing this week, up to £24.3 billion in February, and with interest payments of over £100 billion on a national debt of £2.09 trillion, the IMF and other financial organisations and the financial markets are demanding that this debt be reduced by slashing UK public spending on benefits, social welfare and the NHS, in order to guarantee a return on their UK government bonds.
Early estimates from the ONS suggest the number of job openings fell by 28,000, or 3.9%, to 705,000 between February and April, its lowest level since April 2021.
‘Lower-paying sectors such as hospitality and retail have seen some of the largest falls in vacancies and payroll numbers, both in recent months and over the last year,’ ONS director of economic statistics Liz McKeown said.
The trade unions must be forced to recall the TUC to organise a general strike to bring down this anti-working class government and set up a Workers Socialist government that nationalises the big industries and the banks and expands the economy and the NHS. This is the way forward.
