Nurses at a majority of National Health Service (NHS) trusts and health boards have voted to strike over pay, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said on Wednesday.
It comes as the NHS is struggling with high levels of backlog following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many of the biggest hospitals in England, all NHS employers in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and all but one NHS employer in Wales voted to join the action while some hospitals in England “narrowly missed the legal turnout thresholds to qualify,” the nurse union said.
The RCN said experienced nurses’ salaries are 20 percent worse off in real terms compared to ten years earlier, demanding a pay rise of 5 percent above inflation….