Steve Barclay taking legal action against nurses

[Gigihadr]

Reasonable or unreasonable?

my opinion is Steve Barclay is utter human garbage

Wow. On what basis is it unlawful?

Isn't it the NHS employers that have requested that the minister takes this legal action?

Well if people gonna die...

I need to know what the grounds for the action are before I make a judgment.

The story is here www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-65341234

It's the NHS who have asked the minister to take legal action.

If it is as written in the article then legal action seems fair

I think a ballot is only valid for six months? Something like that.

It’s standard practice when striking they check everything
there’s loads of legal criteria from serving notice ,result and turn out of ballot
we had one of our strikes cancelled for being unlawful
the union had fucked up on the procedures
so we couldn’t strike

It will be an allegation that they haven't complied with the statutory requirements for calling the strike - if there has been a technical breach of these rules, the strike would be a breach of contract by the employees, the union is inducing a breach of contract and the employer can therefore obtain an injunction to prevent the breach of contract (i.e. stop the strike).

Approx 350 per week die, needlessly waiting for treatment, on non strike weeks, no one seems to give a FF about that.

He may well win in the courts (he wouldn't be applying if he didn't think so) but expect even more NHS staff to leave/go off sick.

Just pay them what they're worth and make sure they have safe working conditions and they won't need to take industrial action - legal or otherwise. Prat.

So are nurses too important to strike but not important enough to pay?

people are dying all the time. The mass vacancies in NHS - caused by poor pay - ensures that.

Strikes are the side issue, people are leaving and few want to become nurses/AHPs.

Its a pity the people of Birmingham can't take legal action against Barclay with the under staffing and unsafe conditions in the QE.

Naive question, but would they have the ability to reduce the length of the strike/bring the strike forward by one day to make it ‘legal’ or would it be too late in the day to do that?

I have some concerns about the organisation of the RCN union, after the way they dealt with the latest negotiations and their public campaign that nurses should approve the offer that was put on the table as ‘there might not be any deal at all if they reject it.’

Their Twitter feed was really quite demoralising in its tone, it didn’t seem to have their members at the heart of its interests.

The RCN are crap, if they're incorrect in their calculations as the article suggests then hopefully they make some changes and actually start fairly representing their members.

PS. I'm all for strikes and fair pay for nurses.

I wonder why this strike was planned over a weekend/ BH. Surely normal weekdays would be better for maximum disruption of elective work.

Healthcare services at hospitals are always busy at weekends and bank holidays because there's not the usual access to GP's, dentists etc.

Then I suggest all the nurses resign in protest. Steve Barclay can step in and do their work for their pay. Except he's not been trained.

This government is truly awful.

It's the NHS employers that have asked for legal action to be taken.

I'm all for holding the government to account, but in this case its very senior NHS managers who are behind this legal action

So Barclay does what the NHS managers tell him to do? he has no record of previously doing so.

He doesn't have to take this action, whoever asked him.

Plus if he wins, the RCN and others perhaps, will be even more pissed off and may vote for further industrial action, it will also ensure more leave and less want to join... so v short sighted.

As health Secretary then yes he does unless he believes the NHS to be wrong in their interpretation of the law. By the sounds of it the RCN have breached the law and haven't listened to the legal advice given to them to this point. I despise the man but if the RCN are indeed wrong then they've fucked up.

The RCN issued a statement yesterday insisting it’s legal and reassuring their members they would never ask them to participate in an illegal strike. 🤷‍♀️

Hmmmm not 100% sure about day 2 of the strike (day 1 is fine).

but anyway, all industrial action is heavily scrutinised by lawyers….there’s nothing inherently wrong about this; it makes a good headline though.

NHS Managers have been complaining about social care, staffing levels and Barclay and many others before him, have done nothing, indeed the opposite.

You'd have thought as HS, Barclay would have spotted any issues with the strike action himself.