Rail and Royal Mail workers walk out as division builds over nurses strike
The winter of strikes is well underway in the UK - Anushka Asthana reports on the latest
The UK is braced for a growing wave of strikes as RMT rail workers' 48-hour walkout brought a second day of travel misery for commuters on Wednesday.
Royal Mail workers continued their pre-Christmas strikes as nurses prepared for unprecedented industrial action on Thursday.
About half of Britain’s rail lines were closed on Wednesday as thousands of members at Network Rail and 14 train operating companies walk out in the long-running dispute over pay, jobs and conditions.
Many parts of the country will have no services, including most of Scotland and Wales.
Postal workers in the Communication Workers Union (CWU) will stage a fresh 48-hour national walkout on Wednesday, their third of six days of strikes in the run-up to Christmas.
For a second time this week, a government Cobra emergency committee meeting will take place to discuss contingency arrangements.
Royal Mail has brought forward the final posting dates for Christmas cards to December 16 for first class mail, and December 21 for special delivery guaranteed.
Nurses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are due to start strike action in a row over pay on Thursday after talks with the government broke down.
The nursing union was urged to do more to “avoid patient harm” and “alleviate unnecessary distress” for dying patients on strike days by the UK’s four chief nurses and the NHS’s head of cancer care.
Dame Cally Palmer, the national cancer director for NHS England, urged RCN general secretary Pat Cullen to protect “life-saving” and “urgent” cancer operations.
In response, the RCN insisted that “cancer patients will get emergency and clinically urgent surgery, it is not in doubt”.
“This is a politically-motivated smear from a government that is failing cancer patients,” a spokesperson for the union said.
Separately, Dame Ruth May, chief nursing officer for England, and her counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, also wrote to Ms Cullen raising a series of concerns about patient safety.
They said chemotherapy is being rescheduled from the strike days at some hospitals despite the union agreeing it would be exempt nationally.
The chief nurses also asked for assurances that community nursing services providing “end of life care and good pain and symptom relief” continue in order to “alleviate unnecessary distress” for palliative patients and their families.
At the final PMQs of 2023, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer accused Rishi Sunak of "playing games with people's health" ahead of a looming NHS nurses' strike.
Sir Keir said the unprecedented nationwide nurses’ strike was a "badge of shame for this government" and accused the prime minister of entering “hibernation” rather than working to get Thursday’s first ever nationwide strike of nurses called off.
There were no talks between Health Secretary Steven Barclay and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) scheduled after they fell apart on Monday.
Mr Sunak accused Sir Keir of sitting on the fence over strikes.
"If he thinks it's right that pay demands of 19% are met, then he should say so," the prime minister replied.
The Labour leader told MPs: “Nurses going on strike is a badge of shame for this government. Instead of showing leadership, he is playing games with people’s health and there is a human cost."Sir Keir added: “All the prime minister has to do to stop that is to open the door and discuss pay with them (nurses). If he did, the whole country would breathe a sigh of relief. Why won’t he?”
In response, Mr Sunak replied: “We have consistently spoken to all the unions involved in all the pay disputes that there are but I am glad he’s raised our nurses because they do incredible work and it’s worth putting on record what exactly we have done for our nurses.
“Last year when everyone else in the public sector had a public-sector pay freeze, the nurses received a 3% pay rise. When the RCN asked for more in work training, we gave every nurse and midwife a £1,000 training budget.
"And when they asked for nurses’ bursaries, we made sure that every nursing student received a £5,000 grant. That’s because we do work constructively and we will continue to back our nurses.”
The RCN said on Tuesday that it had agreed further exemptions to the strike action, including emergency cancer services and “front-door” urgent care assessment and admission units for paediatric-only A&E departments.
Civil servants in the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) – including driving examiners and Rural Payments Agency workers – continue their walkouts on Wednesday.
The strike action is regional, with members working for the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) having kicked off a month-long rolling strike programme in Scotland and northern England on Tuesday.
The wave of industrial action is growing, with physiotherapists in England and Wales voting to strike in their first ever ballot on pay. The action is expected to take place early in the new year.
Midwives and maternity support workers in Wales who are members of the Royal College of Midwives have also voted to go on strike over pay. The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) has written to Steve Barclay to spell out the “multiple challenges” frontline staff are facing.
Members of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) rail workers’ union at operator CrossCountry are also set to strike on Boxing Day and December 27, it was announced on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, workers on London’s new Elizabeth railway line have voted overwhelmingly to take industrial action over pay.
Members of Prospect at Rail for London Infrastructure (RfLI) have rejected a 4% pay offer for 2022 which the union said was well below current inflation.
Planned strikes by security guards on Eurostar this week have been called off.
Members of the RMT employed by contractor Mitie were due to walk out on Friday and Sunday in a dispute over pay.
Talks on pay are continuing, and further strikes next week will go ahead if the dispute is not resolved.
Mitie said it has contingency plans if the action proceeds.
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