London, Europe Brief News – British nurses and ambulance drivers will press on with more strikes in a dispute over pay after talks with the government failed to produce a breakthrough on Monday.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which represents close to half a million nurses, midwives and health care assistants described the talks as “bitterly disappointing.”
“There is no resolution to our dispute yet in sight,” Joanne Galbraith-Marten, the RCN’s director of employee relations and legal services, said in a statement. “This intransigence is letting patients down. Ministers have a distance to travel to avert next week’s nurses strike,” she added.
After resisting union calls for direct talks with the government on pay for months, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak opened the door in a last ditch effort to end the worst wave of industrial action the United Kingdom has seen for many years.
Ambulance staff push a stretcher outside the Royal London hospital in east London on January 4, 2023. UK medical bodies said patients were dying due to inadequate care and urged the government to act as Britain’s health service grapples with a winter crisis of strikes and soaring demand.
Going into the talks, health care unions had warned that strikes set for later this month would go ahead unless the government increases pay for the current financial year to April 2023.
In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, Sunak didn’t rule out addressing this year’s pay for nurses and other National Health Service (NHS) workers. RCN general secretary Pat Cullen later told the public broadcaster that his remarks offered “a chink of optimism.”
