Advertisement

Danish nurses to continue strike with no deal on horizon

Ritzau/The Local
Ritzau/The Local - [email protected]
Danish nurses to continue strike with no deal on horizon
Medlemmer fra Dansk Sygeplejeråd støtter op om forhandlerne, da forligsmanden, Dansk Sygeplejeråd (DSR) og arbejdsgiverne i Danske Regioner og Kommunernes Landsforening mødes i Forligsinstitutionen i København fredag den 7. maj 2021. Det sker, efter sygeplejerskerne stemte med et snævert nej til et overenskomstforlig, som fagforeningen havde forhandlet hjem med arbejdsgiverne. Første møde i Forligsen fandt sted 28. april. Sygeplejerskerne har varslet strejke med start 21. maj.. (Foto: Philip Davali/Ritzau Scanpix)

The Danish Nurses' Organisation (Dansk Sygeplejeråd, DSR) has announced its ongoing strike will be continued, with 225 more nurses participating.

Advertisement

The additional nurses will strike from August 17th, the nurses’ union confirmed in a statement.

“Although we are taking a smaller number of nurses on strike this time, it will hurt (us),” DSR chairperson Grete Christensen said in the statement.

“(The strike) will come into effect when departments have returned from their summer holidays and would normally be increasing their activity,” Christensen said.

A strike of 702 nurses from August 10th was announced last week in a previous extension of the ongoing industrial action.

As such, as total of almost 1,000 extra nurses will now take part in the strike in addition to the initial 5,000 that first went on strike last month. That corresponds to around ten percent of the nurses’ union’s total membership.

READ ALSO: EXPLAINED: What Denmark nurses’ strike means for you

The nurses are striking after a DSR’s members twice turned down a collective bargaining agreement (overenskomst in Danish) negotiated with representatives of regional and municipal authorities, which are the employers of the nurses.

Later extensions to the strike were blamed by Christensen on inaction on the part of employers’ organisations and politicians.

Advertisement

“Our aim is to motivate employers to come to the negotiating table with more money for nurses and to get politicians at Christiansborg (parliament, ed.) to deliver the necessary framework needed to give nurses reliable promises that many years of lagging wages are going to end,” the union leader said.

Region North Jutland will see most scheduled surgery cancelled due to the strike, with capacity only sufficient for acute procedures.

Meanwhile, the Central Jutland Region will be required to cut back on the provision for free hospital choice, news wire Ritzau reports.

Nurses involved in surgery and anaesthesia will be among those involved in the additional strikes, DSR said.

The industrial conflict is therefore expected to result in delays to operations and other treatments.

According to DSR, around 36,500 health service activities were postponed during the first three weeks of the strike.

More

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also