Members of the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Midwives have voted to accept a new pay offer from the Scottish Government.

The unions had recommended its members back the deal which would see a 6.5% increase from April.

On top of a 7.5% pay rise imposed for 2022/23, it means many staff will see their pay increase by 13%-14% over two years.

The votes to accept the offer ends the immediate threat of strike action.

It comes after members of GMB Scotland, the union representing NHS and ambulance staff, accepted the offer last week.

All three unions had mandates to strike after rejecting the 2022/23 pay offer, but they were suspended in January ahead of intensive negotiations over the 2023/24 pay deal.

Commitment

he new deal also includes the commitment to modernising the Agenda for Change pay system, and to support workforce recruitment, sustainability and retention.

The BBC says the Scottish Government previously stated that the offer would make Scotland's NHS staff by far the best paid in the UK.

The RCN confirmed just over 50% of eligible members took part in the consultative ballot with 53.4% voting to accept the offer.

Among RCM members, 44% took part in the ballot, with 69% voting to accept the deal

The Scottish Government said it had committed an extra £568million to the 2023/24 offer to 160,000 NHS Scotland workers on Agenda for Change contracts - who includes nurses, paramedics, midwives and porters.

  • Thousands of signal workers and maintenance staff in the RMT union have voted overwhelmingly to accept an offer from Network Rail to end its dispute.

It means they will not take part in any more strikes in the long-running battle over pay, jobs and working conditions.

However, RMT members who work for 14 train-operating companies are still due to walk out on March 30 and April 1.

But the Network Rail result will be seen as a significant breakthrough.

RMT general secretary Mike Lynch told the BBC that the offer had not been as high as he would have liked, but members had voted decisively to accept the deal.

"We're not pretending this is an overwhelming victory," he said. "We're not celebrating the outcome, but we do accept our members' verdict that they have said 'this is enough'."

The turnout for the vote was nearly 90%, said the RMT, with 76% of members voting in favour of the pay offer.

Amended offer

The deal comes after Network Rail amended its previously-rejected offer of a 5% pay rise for 2022 and a 4% increase this year.

The UK Government did not put any more money on the table, but the tweaked proposals backdated this year's pay increase by three months, meaning workers end up with a bigger lump sum upfront.

The RMT - the country's biggest rail union - said the offer amounted to an uplift on salaries of between 14.4% for the lowest-paid grades to 9.2% for the highest paid.

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