Britain’s ministers are ready to discuss working conditions, National Health Service (NHS) performance, and a host of other issues with nurses to avert planned strikes across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland on December 15 and 20, but refuse to negotiate on pay, media reported.
"Of course, the Health Secretary wants to talk to the profession about how we can make the make the job better, how we can improve the NHS performance for everybody. But ultimately pay is decided by an independent pay body,” Britain's foreign secretary, James Cleverly, told journalists.
He added that independent bodies "are there for a reason, to take the politics out of this kind of stuff.”
Cleverly reiterated that pay recommendations made in July by the independent NHS Pay Review Body were being implemented in full. In accordance with them, newly qualified nurses had a 5.5 percent increase, while those on the lowest salaries (porters and cleaners) received a pay rise of up to 9.3 percent.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) voted for the first national strike in the trade union's 106-year history in November over demands for a pay rise five percent above the Retail Price Index (RPI) rate of inflation. Currently, inflation is running at 12 percent amid the cost-of-living crisis.
The RCN general secretary, Pat Cullen, earlier said strikes could be avoided if there were serious negotiations with the health secretary over pay.
"I won't dig in if he doesn't," Cullen said on Sunday, adding that it was not about "lining their pockets with gold," but about helping nurses "make ends meet." But even talk about following Scotland's example of a "varied" pay uplift depending on "pay band" failed to make any headway.
With the strike set to cause major disruption to already lengthy waiting lists, shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting suggested that the government did not have any "plan for the NHS this winter." In a media interview, Streeting said:
"It is completely unreasonable for the government not to want to negotiate."
When they reluctantly voted to strike for better wages, nurses in the British public health service said their annual pay rises had failed to compensate for the real-term cut to their income due to the seven-year public sector pay freeze imposed under Prime Minister David Cameron. The NHS nurses claim they can barely afford to keep food on the table with what they earn.
The strike action called by the RCN comes as many British unions across various sectors have been forced to consider stoppages as the energy crisis has caused a knock-on effect on the prices of other necessities. Since summer, railway, seaport, and postal workers have all walked out over pay offers that fail to keep up with soaring inflation.