LONDON: Hundreds of thousands of workers in England’s state-run National Health Service went on strike yesterday for the first time since 1982 following the government’s rejection of an across-the-board pay rise.
Midwives taking their first ever industrial action joined NHS nurses and ambulance crews across the country in stopping working for four hours.
As picket lines formed outside hospitals, emergency services were maintained as part of a deal with managers, although London’s ambulance service had the police and military on standby.
“We want the government to realise that we’re doing a very hard job and under very difficult circumstances, and we just want to be paid fairly,” said paediatric nurse Karen Buonaiuto, one of a dozen striking staff gathered outside St Mary’s Hospital in London.
The action is intended to put pressure on Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who rejected the recommendations of an independent pay panel for a below-inflation, one-percent wage increase for all health service staff.
Hunt has only agreed to implement the one-percent rise for the four in 10 workers who do not already receive an incremental salary increase linked to their professional development.
“The majority of NHS staff get an automatic three-percent increment but we can’t afford to give a one-percent rise to people already getting that,” the minister said.
He told BBC radio: “We have had very clear analysis that if we did that, hospital chief executives would lay off around 4,000 nurses this year and around 10,000 nurses next year.”
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government has roughly halved Britain’s budget deficit from 11 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) since taking office in 2010.
But the continued belt-tightening has been criticised by trade unions citing the health of the British economy, which is expected to grow by three percent in 2014. Trades Union Congress (TUC) general secretary Frances O’Grady, who joined a picket line in London, said morale had hit “rock-bottom”. “NHS staff faced year-on-year cuts in the relative value of their pay,” she said.
Union leaders say that small pay increases plus inflation mean the value of NHS pay has fallen by 12 percent since 2011.
Among several unions taking industrial action, the Royal College of Midwives went on strike for the first time in its 133-year existence.
After the walkout, union workers will keep up the pressure by insisting on taking their breaks and refusing to work overtime between Tuesday and Friday.
Meanwhile a TUC-organised national protest will be staged in London on Saturday under the banner Britain Needs A Pay Rise.
Hunt said he was prepared to talk to the unions, but only if they were prepared to consider reforming the “unclear and unfair” system of increments.
AFP
