Nearly one year after the new Labour government resolved the pay disputes and strikes that had dogged the NHS from 2022 to 2024, the health unions remain unhappy. Personnel Today rounds up where things stand across the health service, and who could potentially strike again.
Hospital consultants yesterday threatened to join their resident doctor colleagues in a new wave of industrial action in the NHS. The British Medical Association appealed to the government to negotiate as it announced indicative ballots of senior doctors in England over their recent 4% pay offer.
Resident doctors are already voting in a formal strike ballot that closes on 7 July. Unions representing nurses, ambulance staff and other health workers are also liaising with their members to gauge their sentiment on pay offers that their leaders have described as “inadequate” and “derisory”.
By September last year, health ministers had kowtowed to the unions’ pay demands and agreed to bumper pay awards, alongside assurances to mend the long-term pay erosion at the heart of many of the disputes.
NHS pay disputes
Streeting appeals to resident doctors to vote against strikes
The pay review bodies made their recommendations, which the government accepted. But with inflation ticking up in the spring, unions have argued that the pay rises, in real terms, are anything but.
BMA consultants committee co-chairs Dr Helen Neary and Dr Shanu Datta said: “Last month’s offer was an insult to senior doctors and undoes so much of the progress made last year.
“The 4% was below April’s RPI inflation, let alone anywhere close to making a dent in the huge pay cuts consultants have experienced over the last 17 years.
“Without restoring consultants’ value, we will continue to drive our most experienced clinical leaders and academics away – in many cases to better pay and conditions overseas – when patients and the public need them most.”
They added: “It was doubly disappointing to see our pay review body, the DDRB, still hamstrung by ministers, despite assurances made as part of an agreement last year.”
The BMA indicative ballot for consultants and specialist (SAS) doctors on whether they are prepared to take industrial action closes on 1 September.
Professor Nicola Ranger, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said their pay award of 3.6% would be “entirely swallowed up by inflation and do nothing to change the status quo – where nursing is not valued, too few enter the profession and too many quit.”
The results of consultations in England, Northern Ireland and Wales will determine the RCN’s next steps, which could include a ballot for strike action.
Joanne Kaye, director for employment relations at the Royal College of Midwives, said: “We know how hard our members work, day in day out, and this pay award is the very least they deserve. While it’s good that the government has moved on from its previous 2.8% offer, we know that members will be disappointed that the 3.6% barely covers an inflationary rise.
“That is why we want to gauge the feelings of all our members across the three nations of this pay award. We are urging them to have their say and to encourage colleagues to also make their voices heard.”
The RCM’s consultation with members closes on 7 July. Unite, GMB and Unison are consulting their members on the pay award, with votes closing over the coming weeks. The Society of Radiographers, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and the British Dietetic Association are also in the process of consulting their members on the 3.6% pay award.
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