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A majority of Royal College of Nursing (RCN)members in England voted against the Labour government’s 5.5% pay award, the body announced today (September 23).
The RCN’s own announcement emphasised that this was not a vote for strike action and that nurses would receive the 5.5% increase. A record number of 145,000 RCN members voted on the pay award with 64% rejecting it, the Royal College said.
“As this is a pay award rather than a pay offer, the results of our consultation will not directly affect employers’ payment of it,” the RCN said. “However, it shows our members’ strength of feeling that something fundamental must change for nursing pay.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting issued a conciliatory response, saying the Labour government understood the nurses’ concerns. “We know what nurses have been through in recent years and how hard it is at the moment,” Streeting said in a statement. “That’s why, despite the bleak economic inheritance, the Chancellor awarded them with an above inflation pay rise.”
“For the first time in a long time, nurses have got a government on their side, that wants to work with them to take the NHS from the worst crisis in its history, to get it back on its feet and make it fit for the future. We will work with NHS staff to turn this around together.
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The RCN stressed that it would have to carry out “a new statutory ballot by post” in order to authorise any industrial action. The Royal College’s general secretary Professor Nicola Ranger is attending the Labour Annual Conference and spoke at a Labour List event shortly before the RCN announced the ballot results.
“Nursing staff were asked to consider if, after more than a decade of neglect, they thought the pay award was a fair start,” Ranger said in a statement. “This outcome shows their expectations of government are far higher.”
Ranger said RCN members “do not yet feel valued and they are looking for urgent action, not rhetorical commitments”. She said they were concerned about understaffed shifts, poor patient care and nursing careers trapped at the lowest pay grades”. She called on the government to ensure its reforms “will transform their profession as a central part of improving care for the public.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced the award on 29 July as one of Labour’s first actions in government. Streeting fully accepted the recommendations of the three official pay review bodies dealing with National Health Service employees.
The nurses’ reaction contrasts with that of junior doctors, who voted by 66% to 34% to accept their pay award. Labour List has contacted the Department of Health and Social Care for comment.
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