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.

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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.

“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.