unions and ministers locked in strike blame game

[ad_1]

Hours after nurses went on strike from Thursday, a handful of members of the Royal College of Nursings left their picket line outside a London hospital and went inside to help on a ward.

It was not a strike break, but part of an agreement between the union and the NHS for flexible picket lines, where nurses could be deployed into action in an emergency.

Strike committees are sitting with clinical officials at each hospital involved in the action, an insider said. If there is a major emergency, people can leave the picket line and go to the hospital to deal with it.

It was an extraordinary procedure for an unprecedented walkout, the first-ever national nurses’ strike, which, unless there is a decisive agreement in the coming days, will be repeated on Tuesday.

For the NCR, it is an example of how the union has taken every step to be as flexible as possible in industrial action, in the face of belligerence and a fog of misinformation from ministers and the NHS.

But on the government side there is frustration and concern over what sources claim is a lack of clarity from some unions in addition to the MRC on staffing levels for the strike. ambulances next week, leaving emergency planners unsure of the number of military personnel needed to support patient calls. The unions involved in the ambulance strike say they have provided clarification.

The blame game began on Monday, hours after ministers, officials and military leaders met at Cobra, the government’s emergency planning committee, to finalize the response to the wave of strikes by nurses, paradmics, call handlers, railway workers, border force and postal service personnel. workers.

Shortly after 6.30pm, RCN General Secretary Pat Cullen traveled to Portcullis House to meet Health Secretary Steve Barclay to try to reach a last-minute deal to avoid the impending walkout of Thursday.

The mood in the union before the meeting was hopeful. Although Mr Barclay previously said he would not discuss salaries, his officials did not release any agenda ahead of the talks, prompting insiders to wonder if a deal was possible.

But with snow on the ground outside Westminster, the atmosphere inside the room was also cold. After half an hour of discussing everything but the issue at the heart of the dispute, Ms Cullen asked the minister if she could raise her members’ salaries.

The union boss made it clear that even an offer to talk pay would be enough to halt the industrial action, but, according to Ms Cullen, Mr Barclay closed his book, stood up and ended the meeting.

Subsequently, the general secretary of the RCN described the minister as belligerent and that no agreement was possible. Aides to Mr Barclays insisted he had listened to the unions’ position on wages but that any further increases on top of the 4.5 per cent offer would mean taking money out of the line. NHS front.

On Tuesday, relations between the union and the government and the NHS deteriorated. A leaked letter to The Times from Dame Ruth May, Chief Nursing Officer of England, and her three counterparts from the rest of the UK warned the MRC that their strike action would put patients at risk and nursing leaders felt let down by the syndicate.

In what appeared to be a coordinated move, a separate letter from NHS England National Cancer Director Dame Cally Palmer was leaked to Sky News, in which she called on the RCN to show compassion towards patients and patients. urged to exempt cancer surgery from the strike.

Yet the issues raised by the chief nurses and Dame Cally had already been accepted by MRC Cancer Surgery, alongside pediatric intensive care and A&E, chemotherapy and palliative care, would be exempt from the walkout.

The leak of the letters was part of a politically motivated smear campaign aimed at undermining the MRC, a spokesperson said. Insiders from the Department of Health and NHS England denied that the letters had been leaked by either organisation.

Yet for another 36 hours, ministers continued to claim cancer surgery would not take place on Thursday, despite the RCN’s assurances that it would. Union officials said it was propaganda designed to break their resolve.

The dispute between the government and railway unions also turned into a blame game this week, although Transport Secretary Mark Harper and his ministers have been scrambling to keep the talks civil throughout the negotiations.

The Mexican standoff that crippled the rail network the penultimate week before Christmas looked set to continue well into the new year after the RMT union rejected the latest wage offers.

The union and its 40,000 members are embroiled in two separate disputes with Network Rail, which runs the rail infrastructure, and with the 14 rail operators.

An improved pay offer from Network Rail which would have seen workers receive a 5% pay rise this year and a 4% increase next, has been rejected by the RMT. The union has accused Mr Harper of setting terms that would allow operators to bring in conductor-only trains as part of the terms of the 11th-hour pay deal.

The breakdown of the talks has brought hardship to commuters and businesses, particularly in the hospitality sector, which is heavily dependent on pre-Christmas trade. The government refused to budge on wages and privately bet that the mainstream of public opinion and rank-and-file RMT members would soon turn against the union bosses.

However, the decision of two other unions, Unite and TSSA, involved in the Network Rail dispute, to accept the 9% wage offer has considerably weakened the position of the deadlocked RMTs.

A government source told me: It’s unclear what their next steps are now that they’ve rejected the Network Rail deal, it’s unclear what their scale down is. Given [other unions] accepted Network Rail’s deal, the RMT must be careful or it will become an outlier in this area.

The source added: We were convinced we had a good deal. What we need now is some realism about what is being offered and some realism about the proportion of members who just want to accept the wage deal and go back to earning their full salary. . These people don’t have the luxury of participating in ideological strikes, they just want to get ahead.

Ministers believe they have strained every nerve trying to strike a deal with unions that will be enough to call off the strikes, with talks between Railway Minister Huw Merriman, RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch, Network Rail and train operators on Thursday night offering hope for a potential breakthrough.

Mr Lynch told broadcasters there were no new proposals on the table, but said there were soundings of possible solutions ahead of further talks with railway bosses.

We need a compromise on some of the terms they are putting on offer and we do need an improvement in the wage offer. It’s doable, in my opinion, he said.

Union bosses say there is little chance of a deal being signed with the rail operators unless the companies come up with an improved offer on the current deal of an 8% pay rise on two years. Rail operators insist they are crippled in their ability to offer better pay conditions by the government, which subsidizes the rail network to the tune of 31 billion.

As things stand, the chances of breaking the deadlock hang in the balance. When asked if there was any optimism that the strikes would end, a union source replied: The only light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming freight train.

If the events of the past weeks have deteriorated relations between the unions and the government, the industrial actions of the coming weeks should push them to the breaking point.

On Wednesday, a day after the second nurses’ strike, paramedics and 999 call handlers will go out for the first of their two strikes this month, while Border Force officials strike for eight out of nine days between 23 and December 31.

It was these two strikes that caused the most concern at the government’s second Cobra meeting on Wednesday.

Military personnel will help drive ambulances on Dec. 21 and 28, but they cannot cover the most critical blue light calls. While Unite, GMB and Unison have accepted Category 1 calls from staff such as heart attacks, NHS chiefs say the strike’s exemptions for Category 2 calls for cases such as strokes do not have not yet been agreed.

Some in Westminster say the worst of this second winter of discontent could have been avoided if ministers had been more attentive over the summer.

A former Tory minister said they tried to warn colleagues of impending disruption from several unions coordinating strikes when it became clear this summer that tensions were mounting. But, with outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson essentially vetted and other ministers linked to the bitter leadership battle between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, their worries have fallen on deaf ears.

When I was in the Cabinet Office this summer I was trying to signal the alarms that it looked like these strikes were all going to happen at once. I could see what the unions were saying the paramedics were in the red, the ex-minister told me. But Boris was on holiday and most of the other Cabinet members were associated with one of the leadership campaigns.

Union sources told me that the ongoing strikes in different sectors were a case of chickens coming home to roost for the Conservative government. This means a tough winter is ahead for No.10.

[ad_2]