Government and unions must enter into an “intensive discussion process”, in particular on wages.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
The British nurses announced Tuesday, February 21, that they suspended their strike movement, and that they were giving up this stage with their mobilization of forty-eight hours scheduled for next week, the government having agreed to negotiate with the Unions. In a joint statement, the Royal College of Nursing, the main union of the profession, and the British Ministry of Health announced “to have agreed to enter a process of intensive discussion”.
According to the text, these negotiations will concern “wages, conditions and reforms to increase productivity”. The Minister of Health, Steve Barclay, must meet union officials on Wednesday, he is specified.
unpublished inflation
The announcement occurs while the mobilization of nurses seemed to be tightened, with a two -day strike without interruption planned for the 1 er mars. This mobilization, unprecedented in its length, also had to concern for the first time the emergency, intensive care, oncology and other departments which have not struggled until then.
The nurses are calling for wage increases for the current school year, but the government has so far been ready to negotiate only for the coming year, calling “unaffordable” requests from the profession .
At the beginning of February, the nurses and the paramedics had decided to disengage in concert, which made their movement the most important mobilization of the history of the British health system. In addition to nurses, paramedics, railway workers or certain public officials have stopped work several times in recent months to claim wage increases due to record inflation in the United Kingdom. It was still more than 10 % in January.