The leader of Britain’s nurses’ union has accused health secretary Steve Barclay of being a “bullyboy” who is unwilling to negotiate with her because she is a woman representing a predominantly female workforce.
Pat Cullen also claimed the government was showing “particularly sexist” behavior towards the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) because it believes it sees nursing as a “women’s job” which it does not value properly.
Tens of thousands of nurses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are to stop work on December 15 and 20 in the profession’s first ever NHS-wide strike, causing serious disruption to services the NHS, including health services.
In an interview with The Guardian ahead of next week’s strike, the RCN general secretary also slammed ministers for portraying nurses as “greedy”.
He warned that nurses could remain on strike at hospitals and other NHS care sites for the next six months in their quest for a “fair and decent” pay rise, as the RMT union has done in its dispute with the British train companies. However, he also suggested the RCN would drop its demand for a 5% above-inflation rise if the health secretary dropped his refusal to open meaningful talks.
“The more I think about it… I am a woman negotiating a 90% female profession trying to operate with a government that is particularly sexist and tends to operate with bullyboy tactics. Maybe that’s why we can’t move forward. By refusing to negotiate, Steve Barclay is ignoring the nurses and ignoring me.
“I think there’s a problem here with being women. I wonder, would that be the case [refusal to negotiate] be different if it was a 90% male profession and I were a man? I really think it would be. I think they would treat us differently,” said Cullen, whose union represents 500,000 nurses across the UK.
Steve Barclay was accused by Cullen of treating nurses with “contempt and disrespect”. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
In a direct attack on Rishi Sunak and his government, she added: “And this relates to the value of care and the fact that it is a woman’s work. Nurses showed the importance of care during the pandemic, the importance of being with a patient in their real hour of need, the importance of being there to hold their hand and see them walk out of this world and say, ‘It’s okay, we’ll be. here.’ All this is perceived by these people, by these men, as women’s jobs, women’s work, and that they can treat us like that”.
Barclay was treating the nurses “with contempt and disrespect,” he said. Unnamed senior NHS managers have told the Health Service Journal that they regard the health secretary as “a real nightmare, vindictive, arrogant, a bully [and] hostile to the NHS”.
Cullen said Barclay’s rejection of pay talks and Sunak’s plan to introduce new laws restricting union members’ right to strike showed the government’s strategy to tackle nurses’ pay involved “bullying tough talk” instead of discussing the reasons the RCN was looking for. such a significant pay rise and then come to a compromise.
She said she was confident the public would continue to support the nurses in their pay claim and said Cabinet Office Minister Nadhim Zahawi’s suggestion that nurses’ strikes would help Vladimir Putin was “false, disrespectful and strange”.
Other NHS staff including ambulance staff, teachers, university lecturers and Border Force officers are among the many groups of workers who plan to strike over the ‘winter of discontent’ that is approaching
Barclay has offered all NHS staff in England, except doctors and dentists, a rise of at least £1,400 this year. But health unions have rejected this and are instead due to hold a series of strikes over the winter to try to secure a deal on par with inflation, which is now 11.1%.
Cullen said nurses could go on strike until next June if they feel they have to. “I sincerely hope so [Barclay] don’t push these nurses to the picket lines for the next six months.”
However, Cullen, a mental health nurse in Belfast, also gave a clear signal that the RCN would drop its 5% above inflation claim if Barclay agreed to the talks. The pair had a face-to-face meeting last month, but Barclay refused to discuss anything other than payment issues.
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“It looks like this government won’t negotiate with a nurse. That’s unfortunate. Everything is on the table and negotiations will inevitably involve some give and take on each side. I won’t dig it if they don’t. But they have to come to the table with me,” he said. If talks did occur, he added, “there must be a give and take on both sides and I will not be found wanting.”
Sunak, Barclay and other ministers’ description of the RCN’s pay demand as “unreasonable and unaffordable” showed they were trying to convince the public that nurses were “greedy”, Mr Cullen said. “They are not greedy people, as this government might want to portray them.” The reality, she said, was that nurses had seen the real value of their pay fall by 20% over the past decade and could work 13- to 14-hour shifts without a break. Some felt “humiliated” at having to resort to using food banks and borrowing money from loan sharks and credit cards to pay their bills, she said.
Cullen said the nurses’ dispute was “a battle for the absolute soul of the NHS, to bring it back from the brink and from falling completely over the cliff”. It was also a litmus test of whether Britain was a fair and decent country that properly rewarded nurses for their work, rather than leaving them to be part of “the working poor”, he added. “What an indictment of any government that the people who have brought us through this pandemic should be treated like this. It’s wrong.”
Asked what victory in the dispute would represent, given the distance between the two sides and no ongoing dialogue, she said the start of Barclay’s pay talks would constitute “the start of a victory”. But a win for me will be to get nurses a decent pay rise so we retain every single one of them in our health service.” The NHS in England has vacancies for almost 50,000 nurses.
A Barclay’s spokesman stressed his respect for the nurses and said further talks with Cullen were possible, but did not specify whether that might include payment. “The Health and Social Care Secretary has the utmost respect for nurses and is very grateful for the dedication of all NHS staff,” the spokesman said.
“Ministers have held constructive talks with unions, including the RCN, about how we can make the NHS a better place to work, and have been clear that the door remains open for further talks.
“These are extremely challenging times, we have fully accepted the recommendations of the independent NHS pay review body and have given more than 1 million NHS workers a pay rise of at least £1,400 this year. This is on top of a 3% pay rise last year when public sector pay was frozen and wider government support with the cost of living.”
A Whitehall source said: “Steve had a constructive discussion with Pat at their meeting last month on a wide range of issues. His door has been open to further talks since then. The RCN should think again before going ahead with strike action. It is time to resume this constructive dialogue about improving working conditions in the NHS and delivering the best possible care to patients.”
The Department of Health and Social Care has been contacted for comment.