“Fund us properly, make nursing, and health and social care generally, a good profession that is well-paid, with good working conditions."
With the announcement that nurses will strike in the run-up to Christmas, in what will be the biggest show of industrial action the NHS has ever seen, and with the government and nursing unions blaming each other for the dispute, one nurse has made an emotional plea to the government to listen to the concerns of nurses.
An audience member on BBC Question Time, who identified herself as a nurse, said that she did not want to strike “but we’ve been waiting for jam tomorrow for decades now and it hasn’t come” and called on the government to invest more money in the NHS.
In an emotional plea, she said: “Fund us properly, make nursing, and health and social care generally, a good profession that is well-paid, with good working conditions.
“We want to be proud of our profession. I’ve just voted to strike, and that was hard, that was a really difficult decision.
“Language like holding the country to ransom’ and things – I don’t want to strike, but we’ve been waiting for jam tomorrow for decades now and it hasn’t come.”
Hospital staff will walk out on December 15 and 20, with the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) confirming that strikes will take place in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with the Scotland branch holding off after the SNP administration reopened negotiations over wage increases.
The RCN is asking for a 19 percent wage hike after salaries saw real-terms cuts of 20 percent since 2010, but the government said the £10 billion price tag for such a rise is too much, after a recent increase of about 4 percent on average.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
(Picture credit: Youtube screengrab)
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