The head of Britain's nursing union has accused the health secretary of "turning his back on nursing and patients" after her members took strike action
for the first time in the union's 106-year history.
Nurses have walked out at hospitals across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but not Scotland, in a pay dispute, and Pat Cullen, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, or RCN, told Sky News it was a "tragic day" for the National Health Service, but said she believed her members had the backing of the public.
" (They) absolutely understand why nurses are doing this today," she said. "Standing out in the cold this morning — put out in the cold by this government, with the door shut on them.
"This is a tragic day for nursing, it's a tragic day for the NHS."
Nurses are the latest group to take industrial action in a winter of discontent across Britain, which has also seen strike action by postal workers and railway staff, as well as in other sectors.
The RCN is asking for a 19 percent pay rise, which it justifies as being RPI inflation plus 5 percent, but Cullen said talks with Health Minister Steve Barclay had been totally unproductive.
Having gone to the talks with "a lot of optimism around", she said Barclay showed no interest in talking about pay.
"There wasn't a single additional penny put on the table for our nursing staff," she explained. "He closed his books and he walked away, and he turned his back on nursing and he turned his back on patients."
Shadow Justice Secretary Steve Reed of the opposition Labour Party told ITV News that it was "shocking" Barclay had "refused "to discuss pay in the talks.
"In a very real sense, the strikes happening today are Steve Barclay and (Prime Minister) Rishi Sunak strikes because the nurses gave them a way out and they simply refused it," he said.
Health minister Maria Caulfield said the government "absolutely understands the issues around pay" but defended Barclay's behavior in the meeting, saying he had met RCN staff "to talk about some of the other factors that make life very difficult for nurses on the front line", and that 19 percent was "unrealistic".
The BBC reported that the starting salary for a nurse in England is just over 27 thousand pounds ($33,317) a year, and a nurse with four years of experience would expect to be earning closer to 33 thousand pounds.
Cullen rejected the label of being unrealistic, pointing out that over the course of the last decade, wages have "eroded" by 20 percent.
"We are asking for that money to be put back in the nurses' pockets so that we can make sure that they stay in the health service … they are not asking for anything more, they are asking for the money that this government took out of their pay to be put back in," she added.
