Labour Research November 2018

Union news

RCN elections


Elections get underway later this month in the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) for a new Council, the union’s governing body, following the stepping down of the current members. 


The resignations followed a vote of no confidence in the Council at an extraordinary general meeting, where more than three-quarters of the RCN representatives voted in favour of the motion. 


The reason for the no-confidence vote was members’ anger at how the NHS pay deal for England had been communicated. 


They had been led to believe that in March 2019, all members employed by the NHS would receive a 3% pay rise, backdated for a year. In fact many of them were not due to receive the whole backdating. 


The miscommunication led RCN chief executive and general secretary Janet Davies to stand down, and to her temporary replacement by RCN director of nursing Dame Professor Donna Kinnair. 


In addition, the RCN conducted a full independent review into what went wrong, which concluded that the RCN’s “processes around the pay deal and its communication were not sufficiently robust”.

https://www.rcn.org.uk/news-and-events/news/outcome-of-rcn-extraordinary-general-meeting