Nurses to vote on strikes in Royal College of Nursing’s first ever UK-wide ballot

Nurses will start voting on Thursday on whether to strike over pay amid warnings that record numbers are leaving the profession.

Around 300,000 members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) are being asked if they want to mount a campaign of industrial action in the union’s first UK-wide ballot.

The RCN said new analysis by London Economics to coincide with the ballot launch showed that pay for nurses has declined at twice the rate of the private sector in the last decade.

It is the first time in its 106-year history that the RCN has balloted members across the UK on strike action and it is urging them to vote in favour. 

RCN general secretary Pat Cullen said in a message to those being balloted: “This is a once-in-a-generation chance to improve your pay and combat the staff shortages that put patients at risk.

“Governments have repeatedly neglected the NHS and the value of nursing. We can change this if together we say ‘enough is enough’.

“Record numbers are feeling no alternative but to quit and patients pay a heavy price. We are doing this for them too."

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Source: The Independent, 6 October 2022