From Anger to Action
Local nurses vote to join nationwide walkouts
By Paul McLaughlin
Nurses employed by East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust last week backed their leaders across the country in voting to take industrial action after rejecting a below-inflation pay offer (5% with some add-ons). It is the first time in its 106-year history that the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has instigated a statutory ballot across all the countries of the UK and recommended strike action to its members.
Any strike will impact all local hospitals including the Conquest Hospital, the Bexhill Hospital, the Uckfield Community Hospital, the Rye, Winchelsea and District Memorial Hospital, and the Eastbourne and District General Hospital.
Nurses in Sheffield pose in support of pay claim
CREDIT: Tim Dennell/Flickr
The RCN is required to give 14 days notice before embarking on any strike action. But, whilst no dates have yet been confirmed, it appears likely that nurses will be manning picket lines before Christmas. This phase of the dispute could last until next spring, unless staff are awarded a bigger pay rise.
Helen Wigginton, the RCN Communications Manager for the South East Region, said the vote reflected widespread anger at the government’s refusal to support the nursing profession over many years. She said nurses have seen their real-time pay cut by over 20% since 2010 and they had also borne the brunt of an understaffed and under-resourced health service leading to an increase in levels of stress, depression and burn-out. The pandemic, she added, has worsened these underlying problems, and led many thousands of nurses to quit their jobs leaving those who remained with even more to do. “It is clear from the results of the ballot that our members have had enough. Our anger has become action. We will no longer tolerate a raw deal at work.”
The RCN and NHS bosses agree that their priority is to keep patients safe during any strike action, and they both stress that the NHS has tried and tested plans in place to minimise disruption and ensure that emergency services, including A&E and cancer care, continue to operate.
However, with 47,000 existing nursing vacancies across the country and 62% of all hospitals reporting a nurse vacancy rate higher than 7.5%, it seems inevitable that any action will result in massive disruption.
At the Conquest Hospital, 50% of wards are already what the NHS terms ‘risk- managed’.
This involves a complex set of clinical and administrative systems, processes, procedures, and reporting structures designed to detect, monitor, assess and prevent any risk to patient safety whilst keeping within available finances. Risk-managed wards are the pinch points, often requiring more specialist nurses; the numbers of very ill patients are hard to predict, so finances and staff levels fluctuate. This delicate balance is likely to be upset in the event of any industrial action, and will almost certainly lead to a block on new patient admissions in other areas.
Any action will also have an impact on waiting times in A&E departments. The latest data covering NHS England shows that 43,792 people waited longer than 12 hours in October, up 34% from 32,776 in September and the highest number in records going back to August 2010.
Whilst talks are planned between the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Steve Barclay – the fifth in four years – and Pat Cullen, President of the RCN, to avert a strike, other health workers are queuing up to take their own industrial action.
Ambulance crews across Hastings have already voted to take industrial action after rejecting the latest pay offer from their local South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, and the NHS is braced for similar action from junior doctors, hospital porters and cleaners – all before Christmas.
The discontent of health workers is shared by others employed within the public sector and it may not be too long before their anger leads them to take similar action. A new winter of discontent beckons.
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