Anyone else fearful that the 5% pay cut given to Cabinet ministers will be passed down to all public sector workers?

lol at mumsnet fixing the NHS. If only

Ooj/Lit - completely agree with you, but having turned this thread into "Can Mumsnet fix the NHS?" I have to go out.

Would happily carry on the debate another time!

Agree, Ladylush. KSF was supposed to sort all this out, and we are starting to use it as it was intended, but again, how much money did it cost to implement Agenda for Change? And there is still no national consistency across gradings. The whole process could and should have been streamlined and done in considerably less time. The private sector would never have allowed something like that to drag on for years.

ojf - you speak sense.
The NHS has become this untouchable thing, and yet we know that in its current form it can never achieve what everyone has come to expect.
I heard some bod on the radio saying there is always an infinite need for healthcare. It can never be sated. So we have to ask ourselves what we can do well.

I do think the NHS could learn a few things from the private sector - PRP for example. My pay is not performance led (well not really - agenda for change sets out specific requirments for each grade but there is no excuse not to meet the targets iyswim). I have had one appraisal in 15 years of employment with the same NHS trust.There were no performance based objectives as a result of that appraisal - just courses that I might want do to for my own development. No expectations from my employer. I find that frustrating and quite depressing.

We have done and continue to do things BETTER/SMARTER/LEANER - call it what you will - at local levels. But I completely agree with you that there are things the NHS can and should stop doing and huge swathes of it that can still be done better and there needs to be fundamental system-wide changes to how the NHS is run. I would absolutly welcome those kind of debates and decisions.

But in reality you are given a 10% cut across the board and told to get on with it. That's no way to get effective services to those that really need it at the time they really need it.

Would you like to come and sort out my NHS Board?

Making cuts are awful. Both DH and I have to do it in our various businesses and it's never nice.
I can completely understand why public sector workers are worrying.
But it has to come. The spending/borrowing is unsustainable.
Hopefully it can be mangaed in such a way as to make as few staff redundant as possible.

We did it by tapping into huge amounts of goodwill. First we took pay drops ourselves.
Then we offered redundancy, sebaticals, pay drops. The staff rallied.

Unfortunately, a friend had to sack all his workforce - there's only he and his wife left now, freelancing, because the staff couldn't agree.

Much will depend I think, on how the cuts are handled and how the staff react.

Ooo - I do agree with you but it is such a massive undertaking........it needs to be approached on a macro and micro level because each area has it's own particular needs and demographics. Ime cost pressures usually result in cuts rather than cuts + a creative approach to dealing with the service needs.

LasyLush/Neon - This is why the NHS needs to do some things BETTER (procurement, bureaucracy, sickness prevention) - and somethings LESS (provision of services) so that what is does do is done properly. We can't afford to give everyone everything they want. And we already don't. We need to have a grown up debate about what the NHS should and shouldn't do, instead of politicians bleating on about protecting it.

NHS here. We've had efficiency savings for the last 5-6 years - there are no more efficiencies to be made that will have any kind of significant impact. We lost 10% from staffing budget last year, have to lose another 10% this year (we haven't had overtime in the dept for some time so this can only be achieved by staffing cuts due to 'natural wastage', recruitment freeze, no maternity cover etc). These are frontline clinical staffing budgets which is having a direct impact on patient care. Waiting times have increased almost 50% over the last year as a direct result of these cuts.

Any future pay cuts will be on top of this, not instead of.

Pay cuts, will always difficult for the individual/family (and me personally!), but they are the tip of the iceberg - the other swingeing cuts that are adversely affecting service delivery are arguably a greater concern.

My NHS Trust stopped overtime years ago. There used to be a Nurse Bank whereby extra hours worked were paid at slightly less than the f/t hourly rate. Then they scrapped the bank and a private company took over. Now nurses get paid even less and have to do all their own admin (booking shifts on line/submitting time sheets on line) etc. which saves the company loads of money. It also leads to chaos as shifts are double booked due to computer error. When it was set up it was catastrophic. We requested a RMN (trained mental health nurse) and got a midwife I left not long after that so don't know how well it's working now.

Regarding police overtime: in my force we get scheduled approx 2- 3 days extra a month- and you HAVE to do it. Our shifts are 12 hours 7am- 7pm for 2 days then 7pm-7am for 2 days- THEN you have the over time for the 2- 3days - so you end up working 7 lots of 12 hour shifts with one day off (finishing on nights) before starting on days again.

Yes you get a lot of money for it but lots of people don't want to do it.

With the financial cuts in the public scetor and the recruitment freeze- overtime is just going to go up in some forces.

Our force has recalled all officers to these stations where they need man power meaning I have to resign as I can't leave my baby up north and work down south.

Luckily I am waiting to start with a local force but with the recruitment freeze I could be waiting a LONG time.

Nymphadora - it entirely depends what sector you are in. And who you work for.

In the leisure/hospitality trade could be 15-20k in finance could be six figures.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom

2007 Annual Survey of hours and earning for gives :-
Managers and Executives mean=34,00
median= 47,082 top 90% starts at 78,072

The big difference in the mean and the median suggests that there are some high earners skewing the results.

oooji - I agree with you. I just doubt that the government are capable of doing it. Even senior NHS managers (for example) are often quite detached from what happens on the shop floor. A hell of a lot of money is wasted on quangos/consultancy, re-branding, audits, gimmicky documentation that becomes mandatory............I dunno, it's just really frustrating. Now I await with interest to see what the new government will ask of frontline staff. I embrace change but unfortunately (imo)the changes to administration are rarely efficient and usually laborious with little apparent gain.

Ladybiscuit - your friends have indeed got a cushy number. I don't know anyone in PS who is able to arse about like that. Online shopping I don't use the internet at all at work - no time. Happy with that too. I did go on mumsnet towards the end of my pregnancy but by that time I'd handed over a lot of my caseload and had a bit of free time.

I think they do need to make cuts - dh's salary rises with the cost of living and up a grade in September. If they didn't do that and froze it instead it's a real cut of 5%-ish.

And it would be fine as obviously now, 3 months in advance we don't rely on it.

Everyone needs to make cuts.

I'm certain that Pay cuts cannot be imposed in the UK - they have to be voluntary. My employer tried to impose a 5% cut last year and we were all asked individually if we wanted to accept. We all said no. If you are worried join a union if you can (Mine was PCS although private sector). If your pay is bargained collectively you should have a vote on any change to pay. And if you are lucky enough to be in a final salary pension then bear in mind a pay cut will affect that.

I don't know how easy it would be for the law to be changed though

How much would a manager , responsible for 60+ staff , budget of couple of million, regular responsibilty for 100ish members of the public at a time (with H&S that goes along with that), get paid?

(Private sector I mean)

Public sector here too.

Recruitment freeze
Pay freeze
Employer pension contributions have gone down
Talking about taking away flexi time (so would need wraparound care and more expensive train ticket)

But I love my job. I did soemthing comparable in provate sector for 12 years, and do not regret the move.

scoutliam - that article doesn't bust any myths I'm afraid. It clearly states that the NHS still provides defined benefit, final salary pension schemes. The private sector hasn't been able to do that for years. And the bit about that saving the tax payer money is laughable. Also, if someone has worked for 17 years and only get a £7k pension that means that that's what they were earning when they retired. Which presumably means they were on a very low grade and working part time.

I have worked for 25 years for a number of private sector organisations and contributed loads to pension schemes (the max permitted whenever possible) and am a higher rate tax payer. I think I'm currently looking at getting a pension of about £13k a year.

TotalChaos - I'm sure most people in the NHS/other public services are not skiving. I'm sure some are. I don't think stopping skivving is going to give us enough savings. I think all public services need to do not just more with less, but in some cases just less. Both in terms of making admin more efficient - i.e finding processes that are unnecessery, can be simplified etc. by looking at ways of reducing demand for front line services rather than expanding provision (health education/improvment programms) and in some cases by just doing fewer things on the front line. There will be job cuts either way though

TotalChaos - that's why I've said (about five times now!) that it's pointless talking about the public sector as one organisation where the structures/attitudes/work are the same. I have another friend who is a secondary school teacher who works very hard and I never even see my other friend who's a paediatrician because she works such long hours.

But there are some parts of the public sector where people really don't do a lot (and my friends are the first to admit that they have a pretty easy life) and I don't think pretending that isn't the case serves any of us particularly well

Ladybiscuit - I work in NHS admin - and do not recognise your description of skiving. We don't have a culture of skiving - our manager rightly cracks the whip and would not let us get away with it - we even all have to clock in and out at beginning and end of work day and lunchtime. Overtime only gets paid if previously agreed with our manager for specific projects/reasons - so if staying late to finish off my job I wouldn't claim anything, but I would if I'ld agreed to come in extra days. I know a hell of a lot of people (including myself!) who are working their arse off for £50 a day or less. Quite a few of whom are on temporary contracts which are unlikely to be renewed...

Try again www.rcn.org.uk/newsevents/congress/2010/congress_2010_resolutions_and_matters_for_discussion/4._bust ingthemythonnhs_pensions

www.rcn.org.uk/newsevents/congress/2010/congress_2010_resolutions_and_matters_for_discussion/ 4._busting_the_myth_on_nhs_pensions
Quick read for people who think public sector pensions are in some way going to make them millionaires.

I don't think you should panic, but the truth is we are all going to be affected. How refreshing it is that our leaders should lead by example and cut their own pay before expecting anyone else to have their pay cut. We are in a worse situation debt-wise than Greece. Labour just put off addressing it for so long is all. It's going to get worse before it gets better and we have a combination of world events and the live-for-today-and-sod tomorrow attitude of Brown's government to thank for that.
We are on one public sector salary ourselves, so...
We'll be ok.