A union vote to accept the government’s pay offer is not the end of the strikes
health-care trade unions in England finally signed off on a government pay deal. More than 1m workers in the National Health Service will receive pay increases of 5% this year—with an additional one-off bonus added on for the previous year. But hopes for an end to the industrial action that has
the health service in the past six months may be dashed. Two of the 14 unions to vote on the deal are still holding out for something better. The settlement does not includedoctors. Whatever happens, the strikes have caused over half a million patient appointments to be rescheduled.one of the worst in British history. The scale of them would have shocked Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister most associated with union clashes.
A quarter of a century on, things are much more severe. The waiting list back then was below 1m; today it tops 7m . One of the unions to reject the government’s deal is the Royal College of Nursing , the main nurses’ union, which in its 106-year-old history had never gone on strike until last year. On May 1st its members concluded a 28-hour walk-out which affected half of English hospitals, mental-health and community services, and obliged nurses to leave the bedsides of their cancer patients.
Although a pay bump may help to retain some staff, the protracted negotiations between the government and the unions may also leave a sour taste. “It’s been unnecessarily confrontational,” says Stuart Hoddinott of the Institute for Government, a think-tank. The unprecedented scale of the strikes means that taboos have been broken. When a decision to strike next arises, it will be easier to walk out.
For the government, too, there will be ramifications. Hundreds of thousands of patients have had their hernia operations, knee replacements and the like rescheduled because of strikes. In January Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, urged the public to “hold me to account” if waiting lists did not fall. That goal looks precarious.
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