Nurses in the United Kingdom are prepared to strike until Christmas if they cannot reach a pay agreement with the government, according to the leader of the country’s main nursing union on Sunday.
Members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) will strike at the end of April and beginning of May before voting on whether to extend the strike until the end of the year, according to union leader Pat Cullen.
“If that ballot is successful it will mean further strike action right up until Christmas,” Cullen told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.
Members of the union rejected a government pay offer on Friday and immediately announced an escalation in strike action.
Hopes had been high that nurses in England would accept the five percent pay offer brokered by the RCN and the government in March.
But after putting the offer to its members, the RCN said 54 percent turned it down.
RCN members will walk out for 48 hours from 8:00 pm (1900 GMT) on April 30, with the action extended to staff in emergency departments, intensive care and cancer care units for the first time.
The refusal is a setback for the government, which had hoped for an end to the crippling health sector strike that has seen thousands of operations and appointments cancelled.