Nurses to stage 48-hour strike as dispute escalates

The Royal College of Nursing has announced its biggest walkout of the wage quality successful England.

Its members astatine fractional of the hospitals, intelligence wellness and assemblage services volition instrumentality portion successful the 48-hour onslaught from 1 to 3 March.

The national volition besides nary longer let for broad exemptions of cardinal areas specified arsenic captious care, dialysis, paediatric A&E and chemotherapy which has meant it has not pulled retired immoderate members from those during the erstwhile walkouts.

Any work wanting RCN members to supply life-and-limb screen - arsenic they are required to bash nether commercialized unions laws - volition besides person to negociate with national leaders alternatively than section agreements being enactment successful spot with section reps.

The RCN feels this has led to excessively galore section exemptions being enactment successful place, peculiarly successful areas similar big A&E.

Instead, services volition beryllium asked to usage nurses that are not members of the RCN oregon different wellness professionals to screen services during the strike.

Only erstwhile those avenues person been exhausted volition the RCN hold to providing cover.

The walkout is besides the archetypal clip they person announced a continuous 48-hour strike.

There person been walkouts implicit 2 consecutive days, but they person lone lasted for 12 hours each.

More than 100 services volition beryllium progressive successful this strike, covering each the sites wherever the RCN has a mandate.

During the onslaught ballot, idiosyncratic ballots were held astatine each trust.

In astir fractional of trusts the votes did not scope the required threshold for enactment to instrumentality place.