Why are the nurses really going on strike? - UK Column News - 30th November 2022

Sources: https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/uk-column-news-30th-november-2022

- UNISON (trade union) general secretary Christina McAnea:
- The decision to take action and lose a day's pay is tough.
- But thousands of ambulance staff and NHS colleagues know delays won't lessen, nor waiting times reduce, until the gov[ernment] acts on wages.
- Decision to strike was made by union members in five ambulance areas only—but they are some of the country's biggest areas
- In my opinion, UNISON and the Royal College of Nursing are gaslighting those they represent. Yes, of course pay is part of the problem, but it's certainly not all of the problem. This is about patient safety. Those leaving are highly qualified, highly skilled people who have been driven out of the NHS deliberately.
- Clip: Psychiatric nurse Pat Cullen, outgoing head of the Royal College of Nursing, hammers home the notion that the strike is all about "winning" the "justice" of more money, and is positively proud of having achieved a strike, commiserating with those who narrowly missed out on the chance to abandon their patients
- Debi Evans commentary: Meanwhile, an army of qualified nurses no longer in the NHS is being kept from returning by bureaucracy and unacceptably sloppy standards
- Refugees—the nursing stopgap?
- NHS Employers: Code of Practice red and amber list of countries—Nepal is on the WHO red list because it has so few nurses at home, yet UK is shipping them over
- Debi Evans analysis: Nepalese nurses are much less likely to be able and willing to say no to unsafe situations in British hospitals than British nurses are
- Brian Gerrish commentary: Deliberate and calculated breakdown, as heralded by the Conservatives' Danny Kruger as "a period of creative destruction"