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Ambulance workers in Wales have rejected a higher pay offer from the principality’s administration in the latest blow to UK ministers’ hopes of containing a public sector “winter of discontent” gripping the country.
Two-thirds of the GMB union members who voted turned down the deal which would have handed them an average 5.5 per cent pay rise and a 1.5 per cent one-off bonus. They will now join about 10,000 English ambulance workers in staging a mass strike on February 20.
Staff across key sectors, from train drivers to postal workers, have taken industrial action over the past few months as inflation has far outstripped pay settlements.
The GMB said all 1,500 of its members in the Wales Ambulance Service would most likely go on strike after the rejection of the administration’s latest offer. This would have added an extra 3 per cent to the existing deal, only half of which would be consolidated into next year’s discussions.
Nathan Holman, GMB Welsh NHS lead, thanked the Welsh government “for actually entering talks, but if this is their final offer it’s too low for our members”. The UK government’s health and social care secretary, Steve Barclay, must “step up and talk pay now”, he added.
Last year the government accepted the recommendation of the independent pay review body for an average rise of around 4 per cent for health workers but inflation has since hit double digits.
Unison, another union, also sought to intensify pressure on the government by announcing that around 12,000 more health workers were now eligible to participate in strike action after re-ballots passed the required threshold in four English ambulance services and five NHS organisations, including NHS Blood and Transplant, where it had not initially been met. The union described this as “a significant escalation of the dispute”.
Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said it was “time the prime minister ditched his ‘do nothing’ strategy for dealing with escalating strikes across the NHS”.
She commended ministers in Scotland and Wales for talking to health unions and coming up with higher pay offers for the current year. To the fury of the unions, ministers have so far ruled out reopening the pay settlement for 2022-23 in England.
Suggesting the Scottish parliament at Holyrood was “really showing Westminster up”, McAnea said that health workers in Scotland had had a bigger pay rise this year “and are set to get a decent wage increase in April following their government’s latest offer”.
The prime minister “must roll up his sleeves, invite the unions into Downing Street and start the genuine pay talks that could end this damaging dispute”, she added.
In another development, the NHS Confederation representing health organisations across England has written to the prime minister Rishi Sunak suggesting that, if the government does not enter pay talks, his new year pledge that “NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly” may be undeliverable.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the confederation, and Victor Adebowale, chair, noted that a decision by the Royal College of Nursing on Thursday to stage its first 48-hour strike next month, and no longer to exempt staff in critical areas such as A&E and intensive care, meant the situation “has become more severe”.
Sunak should “urgently reconsider” his government’s stance “or run the risk of your key pledge to reduce waiting lists being compromised”, they said.
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