TEHRAN- Many sectors have been taking industrial action but the UK health sector is now posing the greatest threat to the government.

The strike action is hitting the British economy stronger than expected. It comes amid record inflation following the Ukraine war.

Workers have been demanding wage increases to meet a record inflation level not seen in many decades. Critics accuse London, and the West, of pumping tens of billions of dollars into Ukraine to prolong the fighting, while suffering grows back home.

The Office for National Statistics says the UK economy saw no growth in February after being hit by the detrimental effects of strikes by a wide array of public sector workers.

Members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) are now set to walk out again after they rejected the latest government pay offer, which the union described as a “bribe”. It is another major setback for the government and the country’s National Health Service, the NHS.

For the first time, the RCN's strike will involve staff working in emergency departments, intensive care units, cancer care and other services who did not previously participate on the picket line.  

According to media reports, junior doctors want future walkouts to be coordinated with strikes by the RCN, something that health officials have warned will be "reckless and dangerous".

This comes as a 96-hour walkout staged by junior doctors has just come to an end. The next round-the-clock 48-hour RCN strike will kick off from 8pm on 30 April to 8pm on 2 May.

And the junior doctors may be set to join hands with the RCN and take coordinated strike action together, something that has further alarmed Downing Street.

In a letter to the government Health Secretary Steve Barclay, the RCN General Secretary Pat Cullen Steve Barclay said "until there is a significantly improved offer, we are forced back to the picket line.”

The deputy chief executive of the NHS Providers Saffron Cordery warned that the government had to act by saying “it feels like a really ugly situation to say we are going to have strikes now until Christmas. We really, desperately need the government to come to the table, alongside the unions coming to the table, to sort this out.”

This is while Wes Streeting, the main opposition Labour party’s shadow health secretary, condemned Barclay for penning a newspaper article expressing concern over patient safety, saying the government’s health secretary was acting “as if he’s some kind of commentator or observer”.

“Newsflash, Steve Barclay: you are the health secretary, with both the power and the responsibility to resolve these disputes, and as for the prime minister, I mean, he doesn’t bother to show up in this discussion at all.”
RCN chief Pat Cullen has defended the latest strike action arguing “This government can’t say on the one hand we value nurses so much that they shouldn’t go on strike, and then we don’t value them enough to pay them. That’s why we’re in the crisis we’re in.”

Cullen added the government offer was “neither fair nor reasonable”, with the “bribe” of a one-off payment unlikely to fix long-term problems.

Patricia Marquis, the RCN’s England director, said that the union would have to consider coordinated strike action with junior doctors.

Hartley, the chief executive of NHS Providers, said the impact of the junior doctors’ strike was still being calculated. The chances of coordinated strikes between nurses and junior doctors would “present enormous challenges”, he said.

“Junior doctors and nurses are incredibly important; they’re central, pivotal, to the delivery of care across all sectors – hospitals, community services, mental health services.

“So obviously the prospect of both groups being out at the same time would present enormous challenges to the service and that would be really, really the most difficult challenge I think we’ve faced yet, if we were to have to deal with that scenario.”

Hartley added that a coordinated strike would be "completely unprecedented".

"We would be in uncharted territory," he told Sky News. "It would be even more challenging to plan for, manage and mitigate all the enormous challenges it would present the service with.”

A union representative has warned that "all options are on the table" regarding possible coordinated strikes by junior doctors and nurses.

The British Medical Association's junior doctors’ committee refused to rule out the possibility of coordinating industrial action with the RCN, saying: "We have a very close relationship with the RCN and every option is to be considered."

So far, the NHS strikes have led to the postponement of around 330,000 procedures and appointments.

The development will be seen as a major blow to the conservative government of Rishi Sunak, which had hoped a détente with nurses would pave the way for settlements in many other sectors also taking wide-scale industrial action.
Instead, now there is a much stronger chance of a series of walk-outs over the summer months, pointing to a longer-term workforce crisis.

This comes as teachers are also set to take strike after they also voted to reject the government's offer of a pay rise.

Thousands of schools could be forced to close if the strikes go ahead as scheduled for 27 April and 2 May. During previous teacher strikes in February and March, many schools had to shut down.

The teacher’s union NEU has called the government pay offer "insulting" and said between 42% and 58% of schools would have to make cuts to afford it.

A survey has revealed that teachers are being forced out of their jobs because they can't afford to keep a roof over their heads. Almost 30% say they have left a teaching position or considered leaving their current one due to housing costs, while more than 70% of young teachers said the issue has made them consider whether they will stay in the profession in the long term.

One teacher said "living in a cold and damp static caravan, especially through winter, means I have picked up more illnesses such as colds etc than ever before.”

Another responded: "I am a single parent and I have to now work two jobs in order to keep a roof over myself and my child's head. I have to spend less time on my teaching efforts and put this time into working a second job."
It’s not just the health and education sectors that have been on strike.

This month alone has seen five days of railway workers on the picket line. April will also see 27 days of civil service workers go on strike, in particular, passport officers at various ports across the country. Two weeks of strike action has been witnessed as well among the culture sector with staff at museums and libraries joining the protest movement against inflation.

They join the long list of public sector workers who are angry at the government's lack of action to tackle rising inflation as they struggle with rising prices.  

The cost of living crisis in the UK and Western Europe has been directly impacted by the Ukraine war triggered by the U.S.-led NATO military alliance. The protest movement in the form of strikes is having a direct impact on Western government’s popularity among voters as well as the economic outlook of Western Europe.