Cost of living: nurses to vote on strike action over pay – and is a GENERAL STRIKE coming? [VIDEOS]
Derisory: last year, nurses were set to receive a pay rise of just one per cent (which would have been a pay cut, once inflation was taken into account). It was raised to three per cent after the Tory government was shamed by the Labour Party. This year, the Tories are once again trying to make nurses take an effective pay cut. You can see why they’re preparing to strike.
Nurses are the latest group to threaten strike action in the Summer of Discontent over low pay and the high cost of living created by Tory government policies.
The Royal College of Nursing wants a pay award of five per cent above inflation, meaning 16.8 per cent – instead of a punitive settlement announced by the Tories that would leave experienced nurses more than £1,000 worse-off.
No wonder half the 700,000 qualified nurses in the UK won’t work in the NHS, no matter how much hot air government officials blow out about how “valued” they are!
If the ballot, starting on September 15, is successful, nurses will join bus drivers, Tube drivers and railway workers who are already striking for acceptable levels of pay in what has been dubbed the “Summer of Discontent”.
But could a General Strike be called by the Trades Union Congress? Here’s RMT Union General Secretary Mick Lynch, giving his opinion on the BBC’s Newsnight, in the face of (in This Writer’s opinion) unreasonable criticism from Kirsty Wark:
What would you do, given the choice?
Would you soldier on, knowing that the pay you are given will not cover the bills you have to pay?
Or would you join a strike to demand better?
And what if the government – and the rich, who are well-insulated against the loss of income caused by a strike, and know that you aren’t – just starve you out?
The UK could have been very different. What a shame a few voters, in their selfishness and gullibility, ruined it for us all.
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Oh dear now nurses who with everyone in NHS government has shitte on. But who can we have instead of these hmmm nothing out there has nobdy would bring unity. Beggers beliefe when most politicians are not for the peasants ouch