Speaker 1: Welcome to Dick it happened here, a podcast for the
Speaker 1: Thing is Not Well, We're here has temporarily been relocated
Speaker 1: to the UK once again. Oh what am awful place
Speaker 1: to be? Lookay, Yeah, I'm your host Mia Wong, and
Speaker 1: today with me to talk about things in the Kingdom
Speaker 1: that is united for some reason is Nick, who is
Speaker 1: a resident nurse there? Nick. How are you doing? I'm
Speaker 1: doing all right? Um, a lot better for being a
Speaker 1: holiday right now. Yeah, yeah, getting getting, getting to escape
Speaker 1: the sort of dismal swamp of rainy, rainy Island. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So on the other hand, there are things that are
Speaker 1: in motion on Turf Island which are interesting and cool,
Speaker 1: and that is on the Okay, So I have no
Speaker 1: idea once again when this is going to come out,
Speaker 1: Like this could be coming out like four weeks from now,
Speaker 1: like there could be six more prime ministers, like who
Speaker 1: knows what's going to happen. Um yeah, I six could
Speaker 1: be rich. He's outlasted the Lettus unlike our last one.
Speaker 1: But you know, sorry to anyone who's up to British
Speaker 1: political memes, that's going to be arcane and inscrutable And
Speaker 1: I'm not collecting we we we we we ran them
Speaker 1: through a like two hour British Politics boot camp a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago, so hopefully they still remember. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But so the reason thing is so on on on
Speaker 1: the day we are recording, there are a bunch of
Speaker 1: strikes going on in the UK. There have been a
Speaker 1: bunch of strikes going on in the UK for a while.
Speaker 1: They keep doing this weird okay, this is my this
Speaker 1: is my, my, my, my, my, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do my one bit of what what are you guys
Speaker 1: doing strategically thing, which is okay. So they keep having
Speaker 1: these strikes and then they'll like go off strike for
Speaker 1: like three weeks as like a quote side of good
Speaker 1: faith for their negotiations, and then nothing happens and they
Speaker 1: go back on strike and it's like, well, okay, like
Speaker 1: you could not do this. Yeah, so straight strikes have
Speaker 1: been continuing, and yeah, I wanted to talk to you
Speaker 1: about some of the nurses strikes that's been happening and
Speaker 1: about the sort of organizing that's been going on, because
Speaker 1: that's what's been really cool and not reported on enough.
Speaker 1: I guess the place that I want to start with
Speaker 1: this is with the last art of deck, Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess there's been a lot of usteria the UK,
Speaker 1: but I want to kind of start with the last
Speaker 1: sort of decade of austerity and the damage that's been
Speaker 1: doing to the healthcare system and what what what that's
Speaker 1: looked like on your end. So there's a couple of
Speaker 1: ways it's manifests. One is like there's been a centralization
Speaker 1: of healthcare services, are closing down of hospitals and making
Speaker 1: larger hospitals and contain more and more specialties. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: my hospital that I work in as a result, came
Speaker 1: about the closing downs about I think three smaller hospitals.
Speaker 1: She is, I mean eas hospital that was lost. We
Speaker 1: lost about at least a hundred beds for each one
Speaker 1: that was created that centralized into our one. There's been
Speaker 1: massive cut back in like lack of funding and preventive
Speaker 1: healthcare and community healthcare. One interesting example of how that
Speaker 1: manifests is like they shifted the provision of community healthcare
Speaker 1: and social care for new mothers to being run by
Speaker 1: the local council that's like local either county or city
Speaker 1: even larger cities level government, and then they would put
Speaker 1: out the process where rather than just it goes automatically
Speaker 1: to the NHS. It needs to be put out to
Speaker 1: tender and give like charities or nonprofits or even private
Speaker 1: healthcare providers an opportunity to bid on providing the service.
Speaker 1: That's and that's a terrible winner on the system. Oh no,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely insane. It's absolutely insane. And what and then
Speaker 1: the end result of this is the NHS service gets
Speaker 1: it because they're the only one that can actually credit
Speaker 1: credibly provide the service. But they have to essentially massively
Speaker 1: underestimate how much it will cost to run in order
Speaker 1: to run to run the service, Oh, because they have
Speaker 1: to they have to underbid the other services that are
Speaker 1: not going to Yeah. Wow, that is a terribly designed system. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there's also like introduction of like trying to
Speaker 1: in order to cut back on the backlogs that like
Speaker 1: the cutting down and services have created via like outsourcing
Speaker 1: some healthcare, some surgeries and stuff to private healthcare, private hospitals.
Speaker 1: But then they're able to just pick and choose the easiest,
Speaker 1: least risky, and most profitable ones. And of course, any
Speaker 1: any complications that result of the problems with surgery, issues
Speaker 1: with treatment, adverse reactions, the surgeons fucking it up because
Speaker 1: they were working overnight in order to get extra in
Speaker 1: order to get some extra money after doing a shift
Speaker 1: in the NHS hospital, which is often the case, then
Speaker 1: falls back on the NHS proper and then in terms
Speaker 1: of workforce the average on average, this isn't just nurses.
Speaker 1: There's an universal pay scale using the NHS for everyone
Speaker 1: called the Gender for Change. There's a pastory prime that
Speaker 1: confusing name, but the reason for that is it was
Speaker 1: a very much it was a less unified system before,
Speaker 1: like the early two thousands, everyone knew it was messed up.
Speaker 1: There was a big pushed by unions and also by
Speaker 1: government who wants to rationalize the whole thing to make
Speaker 1: it make more sense in theory, tie people's wage to
Speaker 1: what they were actually doing more directly in a more
Speaker 1: consistent way. Hence Agenda for Change because there was an
Speaker 1: agenda for changing of what's happening, but it's been in
Speaker 1: place for over twenty years. Not so the name doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense, but basically everyone on Agenda for Change has
Speaker 1: on average in the last ten years, had a twenty
Speaker 1: percent pay cut in real terms. Then doctors and dentists,
Speaker 1: because they're special boys love them, but you know, have
Speaker 1: on a different pay scale, and junior doctors on average
Speaker 1: have had an even worse paycut of about twenty eight percent.
Speaker 1: Then there are strikes. There are on strike like right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're on strike right now. And unlike my union, they
Speaker 1: haven't pissed about the government. They've gone straight to a
Speaker 1: full three days no derogations, the term for agreeing to
Speaker 1: not provide services for life or in order to protect
Speaker 1: patient safety, which the RCN went in for in a
Speaker 1: big way. In some ways they've got it a bit
Speaker 1: easier and that they can just say, oh, the consultants
Speaker 1: will do all of this, like that is to you
Speaker 1: to translate into a mouth to make and healthcare that
Speaker 1: would be attending. And so this strike of junior doctors
Speaker 1: includes everyone from like their first two years post medical
Speaker 1: school what we call foundation years. Possibly that'd be equivalent
Speaker 1: to internship in America, and they and our registrars, so
Speaker 1: people who rested in specialty training equivalent of a like
Speaker 1: a resident. I believe the government tried to persuade them
Speaker 1: to call off in order to go into talks, but
Speaker 1: they hadn't made a big show in promise of like
Speaker 1: we will in good faith, we will call off strikes
Speaker 1: and go into negotiations if the government agrees to have
Speaker 1: serious formal talks. So they were able to just say
Speaker 1: to the government, no, you're putting too many preconditions on
Speaker 1: these talks. We're not doing it until you make until
Speaker 1: you stop messing us about, whereas unfortunately my union, the RCM,
Speaker 1: is addicted to protecting the image of nursing and like
Speaker 1: acting in good faith even when they're dealing with someone
Speaker 1: who have no intention of dealing in good faith. Yeah, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that I don't know as a strategy. It's
Speaker 1: really frustrating because you just didn't get like you can
Speaker 1: just get locked in endless negotiations, which is nothing is happening,
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's really frustrating to pricing the SOCLE compact. This.
Speaker 1: The RCM in England, Wales and Scotland Northern ireland's a
Speaker 1: slightly different story. I've never had a strike until last year.
Speaker 1: Historically the RCN was an anti strike union. Wait white, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: that's the thing in the UK. Yeah, like I know,
Speaker 1: I know, like the US has a lot of weird,
Speaker 1: not very good unions, but like, I don't know, I'm
Speaker 1: notch ever heard of me? Really, that's yes. Wow, So
Speaker 1: that changed either in the nineties or the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: I honestly can't remember when I tried to look it up.
Speaker 1: But whenever you trying to search this stuff, just your
Speaker 1: search results are like flooded by stuff around the latest round.
Speaker 1: What you're gonna understand is the RCN. It's one hundred
Speaker 1: and six years old. It only became a union though
Speaker 1: about fifty years ago then. So the RCN is both
Speaker 1: the union and a professional body in that okay. It
Speaker 1: also does stuff around developing, developing nursing best practice, research
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing, and that's what it existed
Speaker 1: as originally. So yeah, like a like a professional association. Yeah, okay, exactly,
Speaker 1: And so it still has a dual structure of its
Speaker 1: union side, it's professional body side that like develops nursing
Speaker 1: practice and stuff like that. Yeah. Well, I guess, I guess.
Speaker 1: I guess that that raises the sort of question of like,
Speaker 1: like what was so like unbelievably like what what what
Speaker 1: what happened like such that for the first time in
Speaker 1: like one hundred and whatever years, they finally went on strike.
Speaker 1: So it's partially amount of breaking points. The nursing turnover
Speaker 1: in the UK's absolute dog shit um. Thousands of people
Speaker 1: leave the profession every year. There's this massive pay cut
Speaker 1: that's happened over the last ten years. Nurse and nursing
Speaker 1: was always underpaid in the UK. To be frank, there's
Speaker 1: also then there was the cut in the nursing bursary
Speaker 1: about five years ago. So it used to be the
Speaker 1: government would pay for you to train as a nurse.
Speaker 1: It would also give you not not like enough to
Speaker 1: be equivalent of the ways of the work you were doing.
Speaker 1: Nursing in the UK has a far higher amount of
Speaker 1: practice hours than it does in the US. I believe
Speaker 1: it's part of the degree and like a lot of
Speaker 1: that time you're sensedly working as a as a hate
Speaker 1: c A or CNA as you'd say in America. Can
Speaker 1: you explain what that is for people who don't know
Speaker 1: like medical stuff, so hate a healthcare assistant or what
Speaker 1: was it CNA certified nursing assistant. I think what stands
Speaker 1: for is essentially a healthcare worker who does a range
Speaker 1: of like what you describe as nursing tasks button but
Speaker 1: not the role of a registered nurse. So they would
Speaker 1: assist with mobilizing patients, monitoring observations hygiene, potentially taking bloods,
Speaker 1: and some investigations such as setting up an ECG, but
Speaker 1: they wouldn't do more advanced investigations ristanizement, care planning, medication management,
Speaker 1: assessing of patients and that kind of stuff. So yeah,
Speaker 1: like about five years ago, the nursing bursary was cut,
Speaker 1: so then it's became as with every other degree having
Speaker 1: to take out a student loan in order to pursue it.
Speaker 1: And then in twenty eighteen there was a particularly disastrous
Speaker 1: pay deal where the RCM in a number of ways
Speaker 1: just absolutely fun. Not just the RCM, the other healthcare
Speaker 1: unions representing unions representing healthcare workers also messed up hutely,
Speaker 1: but like they really fumbled the ball. It resulted arguably
Speaker 1: some people describe it as the leadership setting out the membership.
Speaker 1: And then after that there was a general, an emergency
Speaker 1: general meeting called the RCM wh's resulted in the entire
Speaker 1: executive being booted. Wow um around this type leading up
Speaker 1: to that, they're being like increasing like grassroots militancy around nurses.
Speaker 1: Recognizing that this was an awful situation, we were in there.
Speaker 1: This also then resulted in like there were various grassroots
Speaker 1: campaigns started, such as like a Nurses United UK. We
Speaker 1: started employing organizing the UK to like act to take nurses.
Speaker 1: There was a concerted effort to put presses on the
Speaker 1: RCM by like I would say, a radical minority, but
Speaker 1: one that represented like a general general feeling among nurses
Speaker 1: on the on the front line to push for the
Speaker 1: RCN to take a more radical stance. Then at the
Speaker 1: same time, I don't know if this was covered in
Speaker 1: your talk in about English politics you're to our deep dive,
Speaker 1: But Northern Ireland didn't have a government at this point
Speaker 1: because as they are now, the DUP and chin Fain
Speaker 1: had fallen out and legally it has to be both
Speaker 1: of them together as the largest republican and largest unionist
Speaker 1: party Unionists in pro the United Kingdom Party after former government,
Speaker 1: which meant it was impossible legally for any for any
Speaker 1: pay rise in the NHS in Northern Ireland at that time,
Speaker 1: so there was not a government that could legally enact
Speaker 1: one great and this was and this resulted in the
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen the first strikes by the RCM. Ever, and
Speaker 1: also like the first nursing strikes in the NHS in
Speaker 1: a very long time. I might be wrong about this.
Speaker 1: I think the last ones were like in the eighties
Speaker 1: or the seventies. I might I might be wrong about
Speaker 1: this though. And this was both called by the r
Speaker 1: and one of the other biggest trade unions in the
Speaker 1: probably the biggest trade union as it's a generalist trade
Speaker 1: union in the NHS Unison. They both called strikes at
Speaker 1: this time and they were significant factor in getting the
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland government back meeting alongside other things. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to give ourselves all the credit, but it was
Speaker 1: a significant factor. It off it gets overlooked and actually
Speaker 1: having any pay eyes and acted the tool on the
Speaker 1: in Northern Ireland just to clear for every second this
Speaker 1: strike was a specifically like a strike that was happening
Speaker 1: for nurses norther in Ireland. Yeah, in twenty nineteen. I
Speaker 1: think it's very important. I think that triggered something that
Speaker 1: she see changed in the RCNA. That was kind of
Speaker 1: the culminating point of like trying to push for a
Speaker 1: more militant attitude on the RCN. And it really like
Speaker 1: broke the thug gates open and made what's happening now
Speaker 1: possible even though a lot of nurses in England particularly,
Speaker 1: I can't come on on the situation in Wales on
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland, like how much people know about you by
Speaker 1: what was going on, But like a lot of use
Speaker 1: in England didn't even know about it. And when I
Speaker 1: was going around the wards pushing for people to vote
Speaker 1: in favor of the strike action, a lot of people
Speaker 1: didn't weren't aware that that had been a thing that
Speaker 1: had happened until I told them about it. Because people
Speaker 1: in England, as Moss, as England is determined to keep
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland, don't know what's going on, and not into
Speaker 1: any degree to a terrifying degree. Sometimes I would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that sounds like it sounds like a thing that
Speaker 1: happens when you're a colonial power, et cetera, et cetera. Well,
Speaker 1: like I mean like like there was I feel like, well,
Speaker 1: our equivalent isn't the right term. But like around the
Speaker 1: same time, like people in Puerto Rico like ran out
Speaker 1: their government and almost no one in the US, like
Speaker 1: like in the commental US has like ever heard of it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I would say if yeah, if there's
Speaker 1: not bombs going off in Northern Ireland, people in England
Speaker 1: not paying attention. I would say, yeah, that makes sense,
Speaker 1: and it's also really depressing. Yeah, I would like I
Speaker 1: would say Norman Islands in the sub maybe in some ways,
Speaker 1: and the bets in Puerto Rico in that it actually
Speaker 1: has a degree of political representation in the main in
Speaker 1: the Westminster and starts, even though obviously should have its
Speaker 1: independence and might, but yeah, doesn't even have that as
Speaker 1: my understanding. Yeah, And I mean there's a whole there's
Speaker 1: a there's a whole thing there, Like the Puerto Rican
Speaker 1: statehood people are like weird reactionaries. The independence people are cooler.
Speaker 1: But also there's this whole sort of I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a kind of like there's a kind of
Speaker 1: paralysis anywhere. It's like that, And it's like DC is
Speaker 1: kind of similar, where there's a whole sort of there's
Speaker 1: this kind of paralysis where like nothing's ever going to
Speaker 1: be done about it other than the US just like
Speaker 1: basically imposing whatever random colonial governor that they've just I
Speaker 1: did to bring in as an emergency manager or whatever. Yes, sorrkay,
Speaker 1: but we are getting we are getting far afield from
Speaker 1: it as before I put yet yeah, something about Nomanala
Speaker 1: that will piss off everyone. Yeah, it's like I didn't
Speaker 1: even know even less about Bulscott about Puerto Rico. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I would also say okay, like so so so people
Speaker 1: don't get mad at me, Like all of the US
Speaker 1: is a quality. It's like the substitute of difference between
Speaker 1: New York and Hawaii and Puerto Rico was when like
Speaker 1: when when we took it over. But yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so we're we're turning to we're turning actually well you know, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, I will I will take this complete interruption
Speaker 1: of the flows as a point to do an ad break.
Speaker 1: So do you know what else is an extensive colonial
Speaker 1: power that who's might cannot be checked. It's it's the
Speaker 1: products and services that support this podcast. Yea, all right,
Speaker 1: and we are back. Yeah. So I wanted to move
Speaker 1: from the Northern Ireland strikes to talk about the sort
Speaker 1: of broader strikes that I've been happening in the last
Speaker 1: like my understanding about a year or so, yes, okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: is it going longer than that? Yeah, we talk about
Speaker 1: like you it's like what happens to move from the
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland strikes to the current situation. So do you
Speaker 1: mean with specifically NHS strikes or like in the UK,
Speaker 1: specifically with the NHS strikes. But I guess we can
Speaker 1: talk about the broader wave if you want to too.
Speaker 1: So obviously all the ship with COVID happened, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then we came to the payoffer of last year, and
Speaker 1: at this point they've been general building of an attitude
Speaker 1: that we don't just need a decent pay rise that
Speaker 1: keeps up inflation, we need one that goes towards restoring
Speaker 1: lost pay. And the RCM leadership after the kicking out
Speaker 1: of the entire executive in twenty eighteen kind of on
Speaker 1: the back foot, kind of like wanting to a piece
Speaker 1: the membership go along with it a bit more. Also,
Speaker 1: we had knew General Secretary Pat Colin, who was the
Speaker 1: secretary of the Northern Ireland section of the RCM during
Speaker 1: this Northern Island strikes, took a more militant position in
Speaker 1: the pain negotion in the joint union pain negotiations with
Speaker 1: the government towards the end towards the beginning of last year,
Speaker 1: where the RCN took a position of we need inflation
Speaker 1: plus five percent. Now this is a bit of an
Speaker 1: inside baseball which like I don't think I've ever seen
Speaker 1: like officially, but what I know from various people involved
Speaker 1: in these things and like statements by different unions, what
Speaker 1: my understanding it is the biggest of the trade unions
Speaker 1: in the NHS in general. The Unison put forward line
Speaker 1: it was only willing to go for a generic significantly
Speaker 1: better than inflation pay ballot of like pay demand from
Speaker 1: the government, which the RCM was due to like changing
Speaker 1: attitude of its membership of what happened when it accepted
Speaker 1: ship a bad deal last time, was not willing to
Speaker 1: go for and a result of the RCM splitting from
Speaker 1: the Joint Union Like Pay Council like the Joint Union
Speaker 1: Council over this issue, which then the offer the government's
Speaker 1: pay thing came in. It said we will do a
Speaker 1: flat one thousand, four hundred for everyone, like on all bands,
Speaker 1: so not a percentage like it normally does. And you know,
Speaker 1: to be honest, if it was a significantly higher amount
Speaker 1: that was bigger than inflation for the lower bands, like
Speaker 1: the lower paid works in the NHS, wouldn't be the
Speaker 1: worst thing in the world. But this one thousand, four
Speaker 1: hundred isn't good enough for anyone. And while I'm talking
Speaker 1: about this, I'm talking about specifically in England. It was
Speaker 1: slightly different in Wales and Scotland. I think generally slightly better,
Speaker 1: but still far lower than it should have been, than
Speaker 1: it needs to be. And so the RCM was the
Speaker 1: first of the unions in the NHS to say it
Speaker 1: was balloting, it was doing a paid ballot, and this
Speaker 1: kind of sprung on the other unions, like a week,
Speaker 1: two weeks, three weeks later all said that they were
Speaker 1: doing it as well. The RCM also at the same
Speaker 1: time hired a load of organized like paid organizers to
Speaker 1: support the paid ballot effort. And what I'll say is
Speaker 1: obviously paid organizers. There no substitute for rank and files militancy.
Speaker 1: But it was very helpful, to be honest, because I
Speaker 1: think there was a lot of like milited, a lot
Speaker 1: of milited sentiment of the RCM. But although there were
Speaker 1: some like rank and file initiatives which had had a
Speaker 1: massive impact on like pushing the RCM to a stronger position,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think that could have materialized, and
Speaker 1: there wasn't enough people like actually who had an idea
Speaker 1: about organizing, about what it meant to go out and
Speaker 1: push through this kind of thing to get what we
Speaker 1: needed in that time frame. Sadly I wish that wasn't
Speaker 1: the case, but I do think these paid organizers much
Speaker 1: is not what I think the correct model for workplace
Speaker 1: organizing is did help a lot, and this then resulted
Speaker 1: in the RCM strike ballot passing in one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy six NHS trusts across the UK. Let me just yeah,
Speaker 1: check that I've got that right, yeah, which is huge.
Speaker 1: It's not all, but it is. It's over fifty percent.
Speaker 1: It's pretty much all trusts in Scotland, all trust in Scotland,
Speaker 1: all trusts in Northern Ireland, I think all bar one
Speaker 1: or two in Wales, and the majority in England. It's
Speaker 1: also worth pointing out the ones that didn't pass it.
Speaker 1: They didn't pass by less than a percentage. Wow, they
Speaker 1: felt they didn't pass by like pen votes in all cases.
Speaker 1: I think the one in Wales that didn't pass it
Speaker 1: was literally by three votes. And it's also worked with
Speaker 1: I think in two thousand and sixteen or two fifteen,
Speaker 1: anti union legislation was passed by the Conservative government, which
Speaker 1: raised the bar you need in order to have to
Speaker 1: have legal strike industrial action, and under the law as
Speaker 1: it existed a decade ago, every NHS trust that the
Speaker 1: RCM ballot didn't would have passed the ballot. Also unfortunate timing.
Speaker 1: It was happening at the same time as the posts,
Speaker 1: as postal strikes were happening, and in the UK industrial
Speaker 1: ballots for industrial actions to be legal have to happen
Speaker 1: by post A little bit sad. Yeah, it's like timing, guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: full power to you. Oh god, I wish the timing
Speaker 1: it slightly different. Yeah. Yeah. And of all the of
Speaker 1: all the trust, of all the unions in the art,
Speaker 1: in the NHS that were passing ballots, the RCM was
Speaker 1: the most successful. We passed it in significantly more places
Speaker 1: than other unions did. Um to my shock, to be honest,
Speaker 1: because like when I was going around balloting or like
Speaker 1: um talking to people, like on my days off, like
Speaker 1: going on the wards talking talk to people while I
Speaker 1: was at work, Everyone's like, yes it was in other unions,
Speaker 1: like yes, I'm voting for it. I'm waiting on tender
Speaker 1: Hicks to have my ballot. When's my ballot arriving. Why
Speaker 1: is my union not opened their ballot yet, and so
Speaker 1: like when particularly like other unions didn't pass in my trust,
Speaker 1: I was really shocked. I was really confused, And it
Speaker 1: seems like a lot of them didn't actually want to
Speaker 1: fight to a degree in that like they were opening
Speaker 1: it because the RCN had opened it. I'm certain people
Speaker 1: in those unions might discrib me, but that's really I
Speaker 1: find it really hard to understand how these unions that
Speaker 1: have historically they're all none of them are that that militant,
Speaker 1: you know, but they all have a history of strikes
Speaker 1: and other sectors or organizing for this, they'd never had
Speaker 1: been anti strike unions unis in particular, it was there
Speaker 1: came about like several unions being collamorated, like joining together,
Speaker 1: including unions that had been founded by nurses in the
Speaker 1: seventies in reaction to like the RCN being anti strike
Speaker 1: and going on like that was the last big wave
Speaker 1: of nursing strikes at that time. So that really shocked me.
Speaker 1: This has been it can happen here Join us tomorrow
Speaker 1: for a part two of the interview, and in the
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