Reply To: Cost of living crisis

So the members of the Royal College of Nursing have rejected their officials’ recommendation to accept the government’s pay offer (by 54% to 46% of the 61% of the members who voted).

The government can’t really complain. They have always said that their offers should be put to a vote, in the expectation of course that they will be accepted. Well, in this case it hasn’t been and now they are faced with a dilemma. If they up their offer this will encourage other workers to vote against what they have been offered, in the expectation of getting more. If they don’t, they will be faced with more strikes. They’ll probably try “divide and rule” tactics since the members of other unions have voted to accept.

The officials of the RCN also face a dilemma. To try to get round the vote or to accept and carry out the wish of their members. So far they have interpreted the vote as a vote to carry on with strikes, taking their orders from the membership (which is as it should be).

It’s a strange but instructive evolution for the RCN, originally set up under royal patronage as a professional body for nurses. Now it is a militant trade union — more militant than the TUC (and Labour Party) affiliated UNISON. It is affiliated to neither. Nurses are wage-workers just like the rest of the working class.

The British Medical Association has undergone a similar evolution. But they have evolved into more of an old-fashioned craft union where you have to had gone through an apprenticeship to join. But “junior” doctors too are wage-workers. Today I passed their pickets outside a nearby hospital. Naturally I tooted and gave them the thumbs up.