There’s talk of strike action, from a union that’s so conservative it considers being members of the TUC too radical. Wonders will never cease.
For years I’ve been looking forward to the politicisation of the nursing profession. We’ve been whinging for years about how hard done by we are. Complaining about not enough staff, not enough support, too much paperwork, targets preventing us from doing the job, bad management etc. but it seems our little worms are on the turn. I have to admit I never expected the voice of dissent to come from the R.C.N. – pity the strike issue is about pay rather than all the other issues, but its a start.
Personally I never considered them a proper union, but now I’m even considering joining then instead of the less than interested Amicus, who seem more interested in empire building than actually improving our working lives these days. For my monthly subscription to Amicus I get a journal on Mental Health nursing once every couple of months and endless offers of credit cards and one month’s free insurance. I find these last two most insulting, since after all the last thing I need from a union is encouragement to be in debt and a reminder that I’m going to die. What I do want from them is to say enough is enough, its time to make changes, and then follow that with real action that can stop the rot.
And did anyone else notice who was leading the charge and getting the massed ranks of the complacent whipped up into a frenzy. It was David Harding-Price, a high pitched mental health nurse from Nottingham (probably an ex-miner and personal friend of Scargill), who demanded “Action, Action, Action!” to thunderous applause. Good on yer Davey Boy. You do us proud.
Of course there is a bit of a disappointment. What action might be taken IF they decide to ballot the members, and IF they decide to take action? Well……..RCN members will just work their hours. That’s it. They’re off home as soon as the shift is finished, and they won’t be back until the start of the next shift. Patsy must be considering resigning now……how can anyone survive with that sort of threat hanging over them.
Oooh, scary strike action!
Have you seen this petition?
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/nursepayrise/
I was at the RCN Congress yesterday. Sadly I wasn’t in the auditorium during the vote but straight afterwards a friend rang my mobile to say excitedly, “Holy crap! The RCN just passed a motion to consider industrial action!”
One word of correction though. There is no talk of the RCN actually holding a strike. That would put patients at risk, and would go against the RCN’s “no strikes” policy. What’s more likely is less severe forms of industrial action such as an overtime ban (if you think the average nurse does six-and-a-half hours unpaid overtime a week, that adds up to a lot of free labour the NHS is getting). One other mooted suggestion is that nurses collectively refuse to fill in the forms used to calculate whether trusts are meeting government targets – so we’d be annoying the government but not actually harming patient care. Can’t we just do that anyway?