[ad_1]
Today is a “tragic day” for many of the nurses on strike. Pat Cullen, the Royal College of Nursing’s president, used those words to describe how nurses felt on the first day of industrial action in a century.
Tens of thousands of nurses are on strike in hospitals across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland this morning in a dispute with the government over pay increases that do not keep pace with inflation.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Jeremy Hunt Says Energy Bill Support Scheme Will Be Extended In April
Nurses are requesting a 5% pay increase above RPI inflation, which equates to a 19% raise, but the government has stated that this is simply unaffordable in the current economic climate. However, the profession has also claimed that the current situation is untenable.
The cost of living crisis has become so severe that nearly a quarter of hospitals have established food banks to care for their employees, and the industry has long complained about losing talented nurses to supermarkets, hospitality, and even Amazon warehouses due to low pay.
The starting salary for a band five, newly qualified nurse is £27,055 a year — nearly £6,000 below average salary in the UK, which stands at £33,000. When you factor in a 7.2 million-person waiting list, it’s not just the pay that’s driving nurses away from the profession; it’s also the workload and stress.
When asked why they were striking on the historic day of industrial action, some nurses on the picket line told the PA news agency.
After finishing a night shift, Joanne McCarthy, a paediatric surgical nurse, joined the picket line outside the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff at 7 a.m.
She said, “I’ve been a nurse for 22 years, and I’ve never seen it like this. We are understaffed to a point where experienced nurses are going home crying. We can’t support junior staff so we have no retention, and our managers’ hands are tied.
“It is about the money, and people who say it’s not, I don’t necessarily agree with them, but it’s not only about the money – I think that’s what they’re trying to portray and it’s wrong.
“We go into nursing to care for families, to look after them as we would want our own families to be, but we can’t do that at the minute, it’s heartbreaking. That’s what we’re out here fighting for today.
“I just hope that people realise that it’s not just for nurses we’re striking. We are doing this is to keep free health service going where we can actually care for people.”
Another nurse, who did not want to be identified, stated that she had friends who were forced to use food banks.
“I’ve got friends I work with who are having to go to food banks, or they’re going into debt because they can’t make their mortgage payment every month, and some have actually divorced or split up with their partner mainly because the impact of all the hours they’re having to work to make ends meet,” she said.
A newly qualified nurse stated that she had been unable to save for a home due to low pay. “The situation is really bad for most nurses, especially starting out. It’s just me and my boyfriend at our house and we’re paying £650 a month in rent.
“He’s full time just like me and we can’t save anything. I’ve got nothing in savings. We want to save up a deposit for a house, but it’s gonna take 20 years at this point.”
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Meghan Markle And Prince Harry Give Deep Look Of Wedding In New Clip
Because staffing levels are so low, one nurse reported that there were actually more nurses on shift today despite the strike, “They say they’re running on minimum nurses today because of the strikes but there’s more nurses per ward today than that the wards usually run at,” she said.
“They’ve said you have to have six or seven nurses to a ward today when usually we’re running at four or five per ward. And you wonder why students come in and worry about what they’re getting themselves into because every place that they go it’s just stress everywhere and nobody’s happy.”
The post Nurses React As They Embark On Strike For The First Time In A Century appeared first on SurgeZirc UK.
[ad_2]
Source link