Steve Barclay has consistently called the RCN’s pay demands “unreasonable”.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has accused the Health Secretary of “desperately looking for new ways not to negotiate with nurses”.
It comes as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Steve Barclay is still refusing to negotiate with nurses and other NHS workers over pay and working conditions.
The average frontline experienced nurse is around £10,000 worse off in real terms than in 2008.
Mr Barclay has consistently called the RCN’s pay demands “unreasonable” and appears to blame the “independent” NHS pay review body (NHSPRB) for last year’s significantly below-inflation pay award.
The nurse’s union has made it clear it is willing to negotiate and “meet halfway” to get a deal signed, but the Health Secretary reportedly told unions that already exhausted NHS workers must increase their productivity to “justify” a pay rise.
The picket line.
Unite negotiator Onay Kasab criticised Mr Barclay for comparing NHS workers to a factory and said it was clear he wanted NHS workers “to give more in order for it to consider a payment” despite them already working “well beyond their contracted hours”.
At the end of the Royal College of Nursing’s third day of strike action, RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive Pat Cullen said: “Rather than grabbing our olive branch, Steve Barclay is desperately looking for new ways not to negotiate with nurses.
“Hundreds of impassioned nurses told me in person today that this strike is about discovering their voice after many years of being let down. The patients who joined picket lines see this as a battle for the soul of the NHS as much as it’s about pay rises.
Ms Cullen concludes, “With just as many nursing staff ready to head into the cold again tomorrow morning, the Prime Minister must ask himself why and understand that only he can set the
