Responding to the opening of the government’s consultation on agency workers covering for striking workers, Royal College of Nursing Director of Legal and Member Relations, Joanne Galbraith-Marten, said:
“Rather than resolving disputes and strikes, the government is choosing to erode people’s freedoms instead. Changing the law is a clear sign they’ve lost the argument.
“Agency workers should never be used to undermine their own colleagues, the freedoms we all enjoy and prop up bad legislation borne out of industrial failure.
“These measures curtail the freedom to strike – and come in the same week as the consultation on ‘minimum service levels’ in hospitals closed. At their core, all these measures are designed to prevent nursing staff from standing up for their patients.
“Ministers blatantly misled nursing staff about the minimum service levels legislation from the start. The government said it wasn’t about nursing but it is now being used to specifically target nursing staff as they make up the majority of frontline staff and patient-care givers.
“We will continue to campaign against the principles of the Minimum Service Levels Act – and all other anti-strike measures like those announced today - and campaign for the Act to be repealed in its entirety.
“Ultimately these attempts to curtail the freedoms of nursing staff will only exacerbate our dispute with a government that takes nursing staff for granted. This provocative approach to industrial relations makes further strike action by nurses more likely, not less likely.”
Ends
Notes to Editors
The consultation on 'minimum service levels’ in hospitals closed on Tuesday 14 November 2023. The RCN’s response can be found here: Minimum service levels | Royal College of Nursing (rcn.org.uk)
The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act would set a minimum standard for the number of staff on shift during strikes and limit the right of nursing staff to take strike action.
An assurance was given in parliament by the Leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt MP that the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act was not aimed at preventing nursing staff from going on strike. In January she said that ‘the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act was “not about nurses”, and it is “wrong” to suggest it is. Regulations have now been formally proposed that explicitly include all nursing staff who work in hospitals and ambulance services within scope.
