'Nurses are well paid for the job'

[Letsallscreamatthesistene]

An MP said this today, in responce to the debate surrounding the 1% pay rise. Im a nurse, and I know what I think (that the pay is ok, not terrible but not fantastic), im really interested to know what others think?

You should be lucky you have a job, right now after funding furlough isn't the time to be asking for a pay rise, for that pay rise they'll be people on benefits that will need to go without, and before I get a patronising oh boohoo ect they should get jobs? What jobs are there.. The country is on its knees
And ill repeat if you went into health or social care for the money then you are in the wrong job, we all know nurses are underpaid, underappriacited ect be realistic now really is not the time to be asking

My friend is a band 8a and earns around £46K - she has been a nurse for over 20 years and works hard.

^Snufkins^

^I think it’s ok. DH and I are both Band 5 nurses...we own a 4 bed house, 2 cars, fly long haul on holiday, don’t have to really scrimp and save. For the job I do i think it’s fine. The nurses using food banks, sorry but I don’t know what they’re spending their money on!^

Where do you live? I’m pretty sure not London or the SE. Did you have help with your deposit? How much is your mortgage? Are you both full time working shifts plus bank or agency? Are you paying for childcare?

Yes my questions are intrusive but you lost me at your food bank comment. Do you think nurses are choosing to do this??

I have been a specialist B7 nurse for over 20 years in London. I qualified under P2K but I now have a degree. It is an incredibly tough job - obviously made even harder by covid. I am of course hugely thankful that I have a job at all but no, we are absolutely not paid relative to the job we do.

Nurses have been underpaid for years the relatively few at the top earn a reasonable salary but for the rest it is appalling. They have little or no pay rise for years. There is definitely a need for a review.

I am happy with my salary (stage 6 band 5), I love my job, I have opportunities to persue different specialties if I want, and have a very safe occupation.

But

Unless I want to progress in terms of management then pay progression stops for me in September. I earn the same as a nurse in any other area despite having to have lots of additional clinical training. There is no pay incentive for up-skilling, for most of us if you want to do a masters that would have to be self funded - and some specialism roles require them.

Also - I am in my 20s with no children, I imagine having to pay childcare etc. Out of my wages I would feel slightly less happy with them!

I don't think nurses are paid appropriately, particularly ward-based nurses, who are usually run ragged.
I'm not a nurse but an allied HCP, and that's been my experience since qualifying 20yrs +ago.
A starting salary of £30K for a newly qualified Band 5 is about right.

My dsis is a doctor and she says nursing looks a lot harder! So, I think they should be paid more. Closer to what docs earn. Although junior doctors aren't exactly rolling in it either. But their career path is clear and the salary increases are too.

Agree with whoever said that the govt has had to fund furlough and now high unemployment. I took a payout for COVID, as did my husband - all to work much longer hours to cover the roles made redundant. I consider us lucky though. I have already had to make 10 redundancies and starting another round of 25. These were all safe roles before COVID so right now I have little sympathy for those getting any pay rise.

I don’t mean that I am unappreciative of any nursing / medical / public sector role but we are living in a world where so many people are seeing devastating financial impact of COVID.

I get 25k working (currently) from home, Monday to Friday. Always finished by half 4 and 2 on a Friday. I do have experience and it is full on but I havent been to uni. Nurses should be getting paid a great deal more than me

Pay cut not payout

I think the pay is ok. I also think he pension is absolutely brilliant and wipes the floor with private sector pensions. But that's just my opinion. Nursing is a 'calling' in my opinion. You really need to have a passion for it, knowing that you'll never be rich from it.

I think all front line health and social care staff deserve a pay rise...not just nurses and not just 1%. Care home and home care workers have been the first line of defence in trying to keep people safe and out of hospital. The heartbreak and pain that they have had to endure in these last 12 months has been life changing, as they have stood beside their healthcare peers to protect the most vulnerable in our society. Unfortunately, many of them don't get paid enough to pay into a 'fancy' union so their little wages go unnoticed and their voices go unheard.

@Sexnotgender

Band 6 £31-39k Band 7 £39-46k

Not terrible?

Band 6 and 7 nurses are not the majority though. Most in hospitals are band 5.

@newusername2009

Agree with whoever said that the govt has had to fund furlough and now high unemployment. I took a payout for COVID, as did my husband - all to work much longer hours to cover the roles made redundant. I consider us lucky though. I have already had to make 10 redundancies and starting another round of 25. These were all safe roles before COVID so right now I have little sympathy for those getting any pay rise.

I don’t mean that I am unappreciative of any nursing / medical / public sector role but we are living in a world where so many people are seeing devastating financial impact of COVID.

Exactly, I'd put my money on it that if nurses get a pay rise then something has to give, ie our pensions that we've put money into, what they give with one hand they'll take with the other. Old people not getting an increase in state pensions that will stand still, the cost of living rocketing, people on benefits may lose them. In an ideal world the government should pay out but they won't ever, someone will suffer and its never those in parliament.

" If you are only becoming a nurse, care worker or anything in between for the money then I'm sorry you are in the wrong job."

Well, it depends what you were doing before, doesn't it. It pays more than many jobs. I'm not saying comparable professional careers, just 'jobs'.

I don't know how people can say 1% is fair- nurses deserve a pay cut? And with tax bands freezing that's a double hit on any pay rise in real and relative terms!!

Funnily enough, after covid when we all clapped, 12,5% would not even be a pay rise!! It would simply be (partially) undoing the pay cuts that nurses have had for the last 10 years.

Please be under no illusions- 1% is a PAY CUT. INFLATION IS OVER 1%.

Think about that- after a year of lockdowns, a year of furlough and a year of covid, our economy STILL expanded by 1%. That magic money tree had to work really fucking hard this year. And it's not a "one off event". Quantitative easing has been the policy of virtually every G20 government for the last 10-15 years.

So the economy grew by 1.2%

Nurses took a pay cut
Police took a pay cut
Every government sector took a pay cut
Where did the 1% inflation go? Into whose pockets? Cause it sure as shit wasn't printing money to pay workers.

And that's just last year. Other than the dip caused by the GFC, UK inflation has held steady between 1-2% for the last 80 or so years. Note that over the last 10 years then that's 1.015^10.

So inflation matching pay rises for 10 years of the governments austerity programme mean that if we gave nurses a 16% pay rise, they'd only just be in the same position they were 10 years ago. But more importantly in our 5 trillion pound economy, where has the 1% inflation from QE gone? (yes the maths is simple, that's £50 billion per year). Cause it isn't finding its way into most people's pockets. Funnily enough, 50bn split amongst the 70 odd million people in the UK would result in a straight forward cheque of £700 to every man woman and child. For a nurse working on 27.5k/year (middle of band 5), £700/year amounts to a 2.5% pay bonus.

Guess there was plenty of money for their pay rises after all.

But 1% pay rise is fair, given the year nurses have had. You might as well save the effort and just write a big billboard that said "fuck you".

I think the starting salary is good, comparable to other graduate starting salaries.

However the working conditions, stress and levels of responsibility are huge. Staff shortages and plugging these with bank staff increase the pressure. That's not comparable with many other graduate roles.

The progression is reasonable up to a point - as has been said, the majority of nursing staff in hospital would be band 5 so after 10 or 20 years experience, most would be on £30k, lower than many other graduate career paths.

Considering the full package, ie job security, pension, leave entitlement, shift allowances, automatic grade increments etc etc I think nurses are paid reasonably. Particularly if they live outside the South-East where the cost of living is so much lower.

I think they are underpaid. I am not a nurse but work with many and the responsibility on a band 5 nurse would surprise most people I think. It is highly skilled work and they are regularly physically assaulted by very distressed patients.

There is a massive nursing shortage and when we can't fill posts (often) we have to use agency nurses which cost twice as much and are half as much use. More will choose that route if they continue to be denigrated and undervalued - which saying they are worth 15% less than 15 years ago is doing as is saying that they deserve a pay cut when so many of them put themselves in harms way this year to a degree which no other profession did.

Unless we want them to work to rule or leave en masse I can't think of a more stupid statement right now.

Anyone who clapped and is now supporting a real terms pay cut disgusts me quite frankly.

I'm a band 5 staff nurse. I work in ED. I think starting wage for nurses is fine but - considering that the vast majority of nurses will stay as band 5 for their entire careers - wages for experienced nurses absolutely do not reflect the level of skill and responsibility of the job, stress and professional accountability in literal life and death situations.

Band 6/7 is not an automatic career progression - its going into clinical specialty or management roles. I find it very disingenuous of the government to be talking about average nurse wages and including band 7 upwards. Most nurses will never earn anything like that amount.

It take 8 years to get to the top of band. The problem is for those of us with close to 20 years experience. Below inflation pay rises means we've seen a cut in our spending power. We are given duties based on experience but there aren't the higher band posts to apply for so we remain stuck.

They work shifts and awful hours though. Pay is similar to teachers but without the options for progression to top levels - and they don't get long holidays and sociable hours. (I know teachers work hard during term time and do have trips aw3ay etc but they generally have fairly social 'office' hours).

Even without the recent issues of Covid, PPE, colleagues dying etc, I do think nurses should be better paid. They also should be trained for free, and not have to pay to park when they go to work!

To clear up previous comments about the increment scales meaning there is a good level of progression for nurses - when the Agenda for Change reviewed pay they decided the top of each band is what a nurse of that level should be paid, then a choice was made to reduce that pay for inexperience. Nurse's aren't really getting a "rise" when they go up an increment, they stepping closer to what was decided to be the fair pay for their responsibility.

I think nurses are underpaid. They are paid significantly less than other professionals who have similar levels of qualification and legal responsibility.

Pay has also reduced hugely over the last decade. A nurse of my grade is paid 20% less than a nurse in my role was a decade ago if compared to inflation. It is a huge drop.

What's most relevant to is that nurse pay is not at an adequate rate to attract and retain enough staff. The massive staff shortages show the numbers of nurses who don't think the pay is enough to get them to do the role.

Why are we focussing so much on starting salaries? The main issue is the poor pay progression not the starting salary, and that’s for the majority of NHS professionals not just nurses. Yes you may start off on a few grand more than other comparable entry level roles, but in ten years time most of those professionals will be massively out earning you. Vast majority of nurses are not band 7-8, they are band 5/6, I work with nurses who have many years experience, masters degrees, a high level of responsibility and they’re stuck as band 5’s on less than 30k. My dad has no qualifications (not even GCSEs) and works as a supervisor in a factory and is on over 40k. I’m not saying his job is easy, but it definitely does not require the same level of education, responsibility and skills as a nurse.

All of my peers in the private sector are on higher salaries despite me having more qualifications, experience and responsibility than them. I might have started off on more money, but they’ve had huge pay rises and bonuses over the years where as I haven’t. That’s the issue, not the starting salary.

@Letsallscreamatthesistene

No they dont need to 'top up'. I think it was encouraged but with no real reward attached to it so people didnt bother.

I guess an average nurse with 20 years experience may be on 40-50k, but that totally dependant on their career specialist choice so its quite difficult to say.

Most of us are on nowhere near that. Top band 7 (ward sister for example) is £43k. There are very few band 8 nurses around, that is matron level

Of course they aren't. The amount of debt and the number of hours nurses have to do to qualify is very underpaid.

Any job where you have to clean another human body of blood, vomit and other bodily fluids should be vey well paid. Let alone the emotional toll the job must take.

Should be at least £30,000 starting. We might be able to recruit some nurses if the pay was fair.

I don't see a stampede of applicants for the great salary.