LONDON – UK Government ministers meet with union leaders on Monday to end a wave of strikes that have paralyzed the rail network and strained the overburdened health system.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay is holding talks with health workers’ unions, while other ministers are meeting with rail unions, which have been staging months of strikes, and unions who are considering teachers’ walkouts in classrooms.
Britain is experiencing its biggest wave of strikes in decades, with airport baggage handlers, border guards, driving instructors, bus drivers and postal workers quitting their jobs to demand higher wages.
Nurses and ambulance workers are locked in a dispute with the state-funded National Health Service as they plead for pay rises to keep up with the rising cost of living. Inflation in the UK hit a 41-year high of 11.1% late last year, on the back of soaring energy and food costs.
Pat Cullen, leader of the Royal College of Nursing union, said she saw a “spark of optimism” in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s statement on Sunday that he was ready to discuss “affordable and responsible” wage demands. The Conservative government has so far insisted it will only discuss wage rates for the 2023-24 fiscal year, which begins in April, and not for the current year.
But the government has angered unions with plans to make it harder for key workers to strike by imposing “minimum safety levels” for firefighters, ambulances and railroads to comply with during a strike.
A breakthrough on Monday seemed unlikely and unions said the talks would not prevent a new nurses’ strike planned for Wednesday. Ambulance staff are due to roll out again next week, and junior doctors are voting on whether to go on strike later this year.
The strikes have added strain to a healthcare system already facing multiple pressures, including rising demand for care following the easing of pandemic restrictions; a surge in influenza and other winter viruses after two years of lockdown; and staff shortages due to pandemic burnout and a shortage of post-Brexit European workers in the UK
Thousands of hospital beds are occupied by dischargeable people who have nowhere to go due to a lack of long-term care places. This has resulted in ambulances being stuck outside hospitals with patients who cannot be admitted, and in turn people with health emergencies having to wait hours for ambulances to arrive.
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