UNITED KINGDOM: Britain’s largest ever health strikes were started by health workers on Monday as some 100,000 nurses, 10,000 ambulances, and some 4,200 physiotherapists took to the streets, crippling the country’s health services as unions were not willing to discuss next year’s salaries and refused to negotiate pay for the 2022–23 fiscal period.
Approximately 55,000 appointments might get delayed owing to the strikes this week. Britain’s health minister, Maria Caulfield, also a nurse, held the health unions responsible for not adhering to a pay review process that the government mentioned is independent.
Labor groups, however, demand that the government has earlier disregarded pay recommendations, as a result of which it is not entirely independent.
General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, Pat Cullen, reinstated again on Monday that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak could cease the strikes simply by agreeing to the demands for consideration of higher pay in 2023.
Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, said that the health workers’ strikes “could see the worst disruption yet,” adding, “We can’t go on like this.”
The state-run NHS can be tremendously affected as the new British Medical Association estimate reveals a record 7.2 million patients who have been waiting for treatments worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whereas ambulance response times have been the longest this winter. In addition, since September, the number of deaths per week in England and whales has been higher than the long-term average.
Jack Porter, 30, speaking from a picket line in London, stresses the desperation that causes the health workers to quit given the circumstances that require them to work overtime and with minimal pay.
He said, “I’ve been a nurse now for eight years, and I’ve been thinking about leaving the profession recently. There are more appealing alternatives available outside of the NHS.”
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