NURSING staff will start voting on the government’s 3.6 per cent pay deal today amid warnings of possible industrial action, including strikes.

About 345,000 members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) will be asked if the pay award is enough in what was described as the biggest single ballot of the profession ever launched in Britain.

The government accepted a recommendation from the pay review body last month to offer NHS nursing staff In England a  3.6 per cent pay rise.

The RCN described the award as “grotesque,” saying it would be “entirely swallowed up by inflation” while doctors, teachers, prison officers and the armed forces all receive a bigger increase.

RCN general secretary Professor Nicola Ranger is expected to address the issue on the launch of the vote at an international nursing conference in Helsinki today.

She will say: “I’m with nurses from around the world today asking why it is our ministers in the UK who have once again put nursing at the back of the queue when it comes to pay.

“It is time to show that nurses are valued and, from today, hundreds of thousands of nursing staff working in the NHS will give their verdict on whether 3.6 per cent is enough.”

The RCN said nursing staff in England have faced more than a decade of pay erosion since 2010/11, with pay down by a quarter in real terms.

As a result, there are more than 26,000 unfilled nursing posts, while student recruitment has “collapsed” and the numbers quitting is “skyrocketing”, said the RCN.