Royal Mail staff, university lecturers and sixth-form college staff will strike again TOMORROW

More strikes will be held across the country tomorrow as unions gear up for Christmas walkouts – including 100,000 nurses in mid-December.  

Royal Mail workers, university lecturers and sixth-form college staff will take action on one of the biggest walkouts on the same day.

Picket lines will be mounted outside universities, further education colleges and Royal Mail centres across the country as workers protest pay and working conditions.

This comes as the Royal College of Nursing confirmed strikes on December 15 and December 20 after members voted in favour of industrial action. 

Royal Mail’s workers are set to inflict fresh misery on those planning to post gifts and cards in the run up to December 25 

Up to 100,000 nurses will walk out of half the NHS England locations were the legal mandate for a strike was reached and every NHS employer – except one – in Wales and Northern Ireland.  

Members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) are also planning seven more strikes in December, including Christmas Eve.

The Communication Workers Union said its members will be in London on December 9 for the ‘biggest strike demonstration this country has ever seen’.

National Education Union (NEU) teacher members who work in 77 sixth-form colleges in England will also be on strike tomorrow over a dispute about pay.

The union said teachers working in sixth-form colleges have suffered a real-terms pay cut of an estimated 20 per cent since 2010. A ballot showed huge support for industrial action.

Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, said that while members were reluctant to take strike action, pay cuts were seeing an ‘exodus’ of people leaving the profession. 

‘Members take strike action with great reluctance, but the effects of real-terms pay losses are simply too urgent for them to endure the situation any longer.

‘These cuts are driving an exodus from the profession whilst providing little incentive to those seeking a career in teaching,’ Dr Bousted said. 

‘The overwhelming majority of teachers in sixth-form colleges will receive a five per cent pay rise this year, which simply doesn’t deal with the effects of inflation.

Lecturers outside of the University of Birmingham contest working conditions and pay. The University and College Union (UCU) will strike again on Wednesday 

‘The Government is failing to act to protect the pay and living standards of our members, and it is in the gift of the Education Secretary to make that change. The message from members on this strike day is that she must do so urgently.’

The University and College Union (UCU) is following up a 48-hour strike last week with a 24-hour stoppage among university staff and is holding a rally in London.

UCU members at 150 universities will be on strike.

UCU General Secretary Jo Grady said: ‘Last week university staff delivered historic strike action and this week they are doing it all over again. Vice chancellors are about to witness another huge show of strength.

‘University staff are prepared to do whatever it takes to win decent pay, secure employment and fair pensions, and vice chancellors need to understand that they cannot simply ride this out. Students and staff are united like never before.

‘At the national rally in London, the entire movement will show it is behind UCU’s campaign to save higher education. It is clear those who run our universities are becoming increasingly isolated.

‘Our union is ready to deliver more industrial action next year, but avoiding that is entirely the responsibility of employers who have this week to make an improved offer. The ball is in their court.’

UCU members at the University of Sheffield International College are on strike for three days, ending on Wednesday, in a long-running dispute over low pay.

The union says the action is the first-ever strike to take place in a privatised higher education provider.

Meanwhile, members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union at Network Rail and 14 train operators are planning four 48-hour strikes on December 13-14 and 16-17, and January 3-4 and 6-7 January, and an overtime ban over Christmas which will cripple services.

The union’s General Secretary Mick Lynch held talks with the Transport Secretary last week but there has been no breakthrough in the long-running dispute over jobs, pay and conditions.

Will pre-Christmas nursing strikes happen at YOUR hospital? List reveals where 100,000 NHS medics will walk-out on December 15 and 20

BY SHAUN WOLLER HEALTH EDITOR FOR THE DAILY MAIL and JOHN ELY SENIOR HEALTH REPORTER FOR MAILONLINE 

Patients and the NHS will suffer less disruption than feared when nurses go on strike next month.

The Royal College of Nursing today revealed its members will only walk-outs at half of the sites in England that have secured a mandate for industrial action.

A sufficient number of nurses had voted in favour of striking at around 176 hospitals and health organisations across the UK, prompting leaders to order industrial action on December 15 and 20.

Health bosses warn strikes will put lives at risk and force them to cancel tests and operations at a time when a record 7.1million people are on waiting lists.

The Royal College of Nursing announced the first in a series of walk outs over pay will take place on Thursday 15 and Tuesday 20 December

The Royal College of Nursing is demanding a 19 per cent pay increase for its members and says devastating NHS strikes will begin this winter unless ministers enter ‘formal pay negotiations’ with in the next five days.

This graph shows the Royal College of Nursing’s demands for a 5 per cent above inflation pay rise for the bands covered by its membership which includes healthcare assistants and nurses. Estimates based on NHS Employers data

However, the RCN has now said fewer than 100,000 nurses will go on strike at just 76 locations.

This includes half of those where they could legally take action in England, all of those in Wales except one and throughout Northern Ireland.

It has suspended action in Scotland after the Government there made an improved pay offer.

The RCN said the number of NHS employers affected will increase in January unless further negotiations are held.

It failed to give a reason for scaling back industrial action nor explained how it had decided which places should strike now and which should wait.

Pat Cullen, RCN chief executive, said: ‘Ministers have declined my offer of formal pay negotiations and instead chosen strike action.

‘It has left us with no choice but to announce where our members will be going on strike in December.

‘Nursing is standing up for the profession and their patients.

‘We’ve had enough of being taken for granted and being unable to provide the care patients deserve.

‘Ministers still have the power and the means to stop this by opening negotiations that address our dispute.’

The Government announced this summer that nurses would receive a roughly four per cent, or £1,400, pay rise following an independent pay review process.

But the RCN is demanding that the rise is increased to five per cent above RPI inflation, which currently stands at 14.2 per cent.

Under the Government’s plans, the average nurse’s pay would rise from £35,600 to £37,000.

But the RCN want it boosted to £42,400, the equivalent of roughly an extra £6,835, which would cost taxpayers £10billion, according to official estimates.

Meanwhile, the head of the the NHS has said patients will not have procedures cancelled at the last minute due to the nurses’ strikes, but care will have to be postponed.

Amanda Pritchard, chief executive of NHS England, told MPs she could not confirm how far in advance patients would be notified about any changes to upcoming treatment.

Addressing the public accounts committee, she said efforts would be made to inform them ‘sooner rather than later’.

Mike Prentice, NHS England’s national director for emergency, planning and incident response, sent a letter yesterday to hospitals and care providers, warning the walkouts could result in the postponement of urgent surgery, chemotherapy and kidney dialysis.

Time-critical services for seriously ill patients may also be scaled back or stopped, the letter warned.

It comes amid reports that Armed Forces personnel could drive ambulances and stand in for frontline hospital roles during the NHS strikes.

The strikes comes as NHS bosses warn the health service faces ‘its most challenging winter ever’ with the ‘tripledemic’ of flu, Covid and record demand on urgent and emergency services.

The latest NHS data shows influenza levels in hospitals for the first week of winter data are already 10 times as high as the equivalent period last year, and twice as high as last winter’s peak.

Strikes, and the resulting impact on planned care could also exacerbate the record waiting list for routine care, such as hip and knee operations.

Official figures show a record 7.1million people in England are now in the queue for routine hospital treatment.

This is the equivalent of on in eight people in the country.

The data, which goes up to the end of September, also includes more than 400,000 people who have been waiting, often in pain, for over one year.