York Hospital not chosen for RCN strike action in December

The NHS trust covering the region has not been selected for industrial action on December 15 and 20, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has confirmed.

York and Scarborough could still be hit next year however, trust chief executive Simon Morritt told a board meeting on Wednesday.

The trust has said it has “robust” plans in place to handle strike action.

Nurses and other nursing staff will take action at half of the locations in England where the legal mandate was reached for strikes, including in Leeds and Bradford.

Mr Morritt said: “We’ve done a lot of planning and been involved with the ICB (the Humber and North Yorkshire integrated care board) and regional planning and our own planning in terms of preparing for it, but it will probably be after Christmas before we see any action from the RCN – assuming that action continues post-Christmas.”

Director of workforce Polly McMeekin added: “What’s really positive is we will have the opportunity to take some learning from Leeds and Bradford in particular as to their experience of the RCN ballot.”

Staff at York Hospital

The union has repeated calls on the UK government to accept its request for negotiations to resolve the dispute over pay and patient safety.

It said that despite this year’s pay award of £1,400, experienced nurses are worse off by 20 per cent in real terms due to successive below-inflation awards since 2010.

The RCN is calling for a pay rise of five per cent above retail price index inflation, saying the economic argument for paying nursing staff fairly is clear when billions of pounds is being spent on agency staff to plug workforce gaps.

Ambulance staff in Yorkshire are to be called out on strike over pay and staffing levels, Unison said on Tuesday.

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But the union failed to win a wider mandate for strike action throughout England, falling short of the 50 per cent turnout threshold in other NHS trusts where it balloted.

“The intel is [Unison’s ballot] has failed across the NHS quite significantly,” Ms McMeekin said.

Board members questioned whether the outcome of Unison’s ballot would weaken the RCN’s position. It is often seen as a trade union that is more to likely to take strike action.

Ms McMeekin said: “For our members, Unison are typically unregistered workforce. We do employ some nurses that are in Unison, but we employ a lot of staff within our LLP (York Teaching Hospital Facilities Management) and they tend to be at the lower end of the pay grade spectrum.

“In that respect I’m a little surprised that it’s been such a strong outcome.”