RCN leader should never have recommended nurses accept 5% offer, but she’s right to listen after they rejected it
RCN general secretary Pat Cullen has told the government and media that nurses demand a double-figure pay-rise, after nurses voted to reject the government’s derisory 5% offer.
Tory mouthpiece Grant Shapps has described the supposed ‘u-turn’ as ‘absolutely extraordinary’ – Cullen had originally recommended to RCN members to accept the offer, but they rightly rejected it overwhelmingly. Apparently, in the Tory worldview, respecting democracy and listening to the views of hard-working nurses is ‘extraordinary’.
Shapps’s lack of respect for democracy is unsurprising – given Keir Starmer’s complete refusal to display any as supposed ‘opposition’ ‘leader’. Starmer and the TUC have reportedly leaned on unions to recommend offers to their members that were little or no better than the insulting pittances offered by the government that triggered their strikes – and Unison members working in the NHS were conned into accepting it by a narrow margin.
Cullen made the same mistake, but at least has listened to the loud voices of RCN members.
Shapps is a scandal, along with his Tory colleagues – but they are allowed to be and to get away with it by Keir Starmer’s non-opposition and shameful collusion with the Establishment and the billionaires who fund it.
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