3% rise for NHS workers , is it enough?

[thecatmother]

With shame I admit, that I have hardly given a thought to how hard our NHS workers have it, or how little they earned. Last couple of years have really put it into perspective for me, pandemic and personal circumstances.
This news just popped on my phone screen, 3% is pitiful.

In comparison, I have a cousin who settled in the US and is a nurse in A&E(City hospital, so not private) and her salary is 83$k per year. And she lives a very comfortable life, compared perhaps to upper middle class here.
We celebrate our NHS and, on our side,we pay our taxes, so why is it only 3%?

@GirlAloud

I work in an industry which has been devastated by Covid. I was furloughed for a total of five months between April 2020 & March 2021.

I’m now one of the lucky ones who wasn’t made redundant, and I’m back working full time, on 85% of my normal salary. I would love to have a 3% pay rise, on top of my normal salary, but there is zero chance of that, or any other pay rises for the foreseeable future.

Some, but by no means all, NHS workers have had a tough 18 months. They also have a level of job & pension security which millions of people who work in the hospitality, travel, aviation & events industries can only dream of. They should check their privileges.

Wow.

I've literally spent 3 hours at 2am on a sunday morning reattaching someone's leg as a locum. After tax I got paid £105, and people think the NHS is bad value for money.

Good look getting a plumber or even a london-heathrow taxi at that time for that price.

FixTheBone I actually think our cheap rates are what causes our time to be misused. What’s the point in hiring a locum phlebotomist if you know the F1 will skip vital parts of a ward round to do a bloods round? What’s the point in hiring a ward clerk if you can make the juniors do the job for the same price? My hourly take home pay is around £13 per hour, after 6 years at medical school and 2 years of working as a doctor.

I for one have run out of good will. I will not be starting specialty training - it is not worth my time.

As you say, we are cheaper than plumbers or electricians!

We were having this same discussion at work yesterday, you can't really begin to describe a nurses role, aside from the role most people know, we also take blood, cannulate, answer phones, do endless admin and hand out meals and don't forget the cleaning/emptying bins/cleaning toilets All this on top of our clinical work and patient care. My experience with F1 is that they also get stuck with pretty much all other jobs that no-one knows who to hand to.

I am almost out of good will and dread going into work, I always thought I would stay in the NHS, I am currently a deputy sister but it's crippling us.

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow the 'private' section of that graph is far too simplistic.
I'm in the private sector my salary has gone down tremendously since 2010
I was earning more as a junior than I'd get now as a qualified person.
Last year me and dh had 20% pay cuts. 3% is more than enough imo when it's carried out so badly. And to those suggesting it should be in line with inflation, have they thought about why inflation is so high? The economy is not doing that great despite all the stuff churned out in the press.

Me and dh have had health worries in the last year. My GP outright refuses to see either of us and will only have phone calls.
After prescribing dh a whole batch of strong painkillers time after time on the phone, dh finally had to say he can't take anymore phone calls so she told she'd refer him. Weeks passed and he didn't hear anything. He phone again and she'd forgotten to refer him. He now has to wait until September to be seen by anyone. He's in severe pain. I personally would be giving her a pay cut. If I'm off sick I don't even get paid other than SSP. No benefits whatsoever unlike the NHS, no discounts all over the U.K. for various things.

It's too blunt to say 3% is enough/not enough. Some people full well deserve it and others don't. I'd much rather a higher payrise than 3% go to those that deserve it based on actual work done.

Anyone can join us in the NHS, to reap the benefits we get, we are crying out for staff of all levels literally.

I am rather shocked that a previous poster told HCPs to ‘check their privilege’. Being paid to sit (safely) at home because you have a job where you can work from home or because you were furloughed, is a massive privilege. I’m not sure nurses felt ‘privileged’ when they were working in ICU without being vaccinated and wearing inadequate PPE.

I’m not sure what to say about wages. 3% feels like an insult but the country is broke. As others have said, perhaps those on high wages (£75,000+, for example) should receive less, to allow those on lower wages to receive more? 15% increase would be lovely, especially for those who are working on the frontline but it isn’t realistic.

unherd.com/2021/01/inside-the-covid-ward/

This was written by a colleague of mine during the January wave. What she didn’t mention was the lack of breaks, the changes in training, the early times when we continued working (unvaccinated) with no real idea of how bad covid was and with no PPE at all. You have no team to fall back on - they change daily / weekly, and at most 4 monthly as a junior doc in normal training times.

It’s less than I would get by doing my exact job in Scotland instead of England, which is exactly what 2 of my team (out of only 16 of us) have just done. I’d be tempted but my dc aren’t at a good age to move into a different education system.
In addition to our Scotland bound colleagues, we’ve had 3 go from full to part time and 1 retire 3 years earlier than planned. We are struggling to recruit, we have cancelled patients due to lack of staff. we are struggling to get bank/agency staff as there is more work that qualified staff to do if. We are knackered. I don’t think it’s enough, not in a “we are all angels who deserve the moon on a stick” way, but in a more practical, people won’t do this job for this money any more and we are in the shit if we can’t retain and recruit.
Lots of NHS staff are degree level educated STEM people who do have transferable skills for other industries, as someone mentioned unthread, NHS admin is hard and thankless and there are nicer equivalent jobs in the private sector. I agree that the promotion system is stupid - have a fuckton more responsibility for 5p a year, then in half a decade you can have a bit of a raise.

You can’t start paying the same band different wages based on how “frontline” they are, what ever that means.

Thanks @canary1 for biting my head off. I was merely pointing out the injustice of some doctors getting the pay rise and not others. Maybe try and remember I just said I was married to a doctor, one of the most important people to me has endured the most incredible shit at work not just during the pandemic but long before that.
On top of that I am sleep deprived with a new baby so excuse me if my post wasn’t intellectual enough for you

It’s people like you that make me wonder why the hell I ever post on mumsnet

@Shadedog

You can’t start paying the same band different wages based on how “frontline” they are, what ever that means.

But they should. I'm a really highly skilled ICU nurse with ALS skills. I'm laid the same as an OP nurse, with no extended skills.

No its not enough. Its not even 3% its 1.5% and a 1.5% bonus they will take off at the end of the year. So once again its below inflation.
I Just recently took early retirement after 30 years on ICU. I asked to return on 1 night a week and was told yes I could but only at a lower pay band. So basicallly same job but £5 an hour less. Instead I,ve taken my pension and walked away. The NHS doesnt value its staff or even attempt to retain experience.
My take home in the last year is exactly the same as what I took home in 2012. because in the interim we are now pay parking charges , our professional registration fees went up over 100% , Our pension contributions were increased and we were no longer opted out of serps.
So I,ve taken a 1000 pound a month drop in income rather than stay. I,ll sign up for agency and probably end up working on my own ward for a dam sight more per hour than it would have cost them if they had accepted the 1 night a week I asked for. Because they would no longer be paying my pension contribution I would have been cheaper than another nurse on the same band.
What the last year has shown me more than anything is the contempt this government has towards Health care staff.
They were happy to clap for us and send us into the unknown with bin bags and expired PPE and staff died.
When you see billions wasted on track and trace and ppe contracts and how they have lined their own and their mates pockets while workers died due to their incompetence then they can get fucked tbh.

@Stompythedinosaur

Pay for a nurse of my grade has dropped 20% in relation to inflation over ten years. There are many professions who could do without a fifth of their pay.

3% is only just over inflation, and the tiny increase would be eaten up by increases to nurse reg fees and the hospital parking charges being reinstated.

It isn't good enough. Until we pay nurses fairly they will continue to leave the profession in droves. Staffing levels are so low currently it is unsafe - less than half the nursing roles in my team are currently filled. The nurses we have work flat out, in a way that isn't sustainable. Things only get worse without pay improving.

This, absolutely! RCN are looking for 12.5% , and I fully agree. Fed up with being told how well I’m paid compared to other industries, that’s just ridiculous. Fed up with low pay, lack of staff, impossible expectations, lack of support. Online meeting with RCN tonight, so I’ll see what they say. I’ve never striked before, my patients are important to me, but the staffing level has dropped as nurses leave, so from a safety perspective, something needs to give,

The NHS needs to pay its workers well or it will not be able to fill its staff vacancies. Back log surgical lists cannot be cleared because a lot of theatre staff left when operations stopped being performed due to covid. Nurses are seriously burnt out and quitting.

We need our NHS!

NHS staff should have had wages sorted a long time ago. Is 3% enough for what many have been through, or just enough full stop? No. But in the current climate where nearly everyone I know received nothing I think it will be harder to garner support sadly.

There are two parts to this question:

Is 3% enough to recognise both how integral NHS staff are and how many years they have gone without a proper pay rise? No.

Is 3% enough to buy off the unfortunately quite large section of the lectorate who can't do maths and live in a permanent state of petty resentment if anyone ever gets anything additional? Probably.

0% for police, 0% for teachers - what an absolute disgrace.

I am getting 0% this year. I wfh doing office work. I want a much higher pay rise for all public servants, even though I am accepting of my own 0%. There is a difference between their job and mine.

electorate, even

@Rupertpenrysmistress not true in the admin teams. If I apply for a job in my sector nearly every single advert says must have nhs experience. This is totally unnecessary. I am qualified in my job and it's very easily transferable skills between private or public sector but the nhs admin side of things is like some club that refuses to accept this and only wants either relatives of people working in it or people already in it. This is definitely a barrier to getting a job unless you start at the bottom which doesn't make any sense surely you'd want people already trained to save on costs of training.

If you do manage to get an interview after the lengthy job application process, it takes a rather long time to complete the job application and interviews so by then you really have to have wanted to pass up the other job options you may have received. I've been there!.
My dh is also qualified in an office based job, again, he can't even get an interview in the nhs. He is near the top of his game very qualified, the salaries in the nhs are actually higher than in the private sector for what he does. But they won't even let your foot in the door unless you've already worked in it or are entering in a junior role. Again, for his sector in admin totally unnecessary.

People don't realise what's actually going on when they assume it's open to everybody. I can't speak of the medical side of nhs jobs I have not experienced that though.

[quote furrylittlebear]@Rupertpenrysmistress not true in the admin teams. If I apply for a job in my sector nearly every single advert says must have nhs experience. This is totally unnecessary. I am qualified in my job and it's very easily transferable skills between private or public sector but the nhs admin side of things is like some club that refuses to accept this and only wants either relatives of people working in it or people already in it. This is definitely a barrier to getting a job unless you start at the bottom which doesn't make any sense surely you'd want people already trained to save on costs of training.

If you do manage to get an interview after the lengthy job application process, it takes a rather long time to complete the job application and interviews so by then you really have to have wanted to pass up the other job options you may have received. I've been there!.
My dh is also qualified in an office based job, again, he can't even get an interview in the nhs. He is near the top of his game very qualified, the salaries in the nhs are actually higher than in the private sector for what he does. But they won't even let your foot in the door unless you've already worked in it or are entering in a junior role. Again, for his sector in admin totally unnecessary.

People don't realise what's actually going on when they assume it's open to everybody. I can't speak of the medical side of nhs jobs I have not experienced that though. [/quote]
It's much easier to get in on a lower band (I did that, band 3 with no prior NHS experience) however I have found it's near on impossible to progress unless you "know someone", which I don't so I'll likely b a band 3 forever which on less than 20k isn't exactly the dream or I'll bugger off back to the private sector where I came from. It's a shame because I like my job, I know I could do a band four of band five because it would be less responsibility. I'd be responsible for a few office staff and not the whole ooh staffing of doctors in my dept. I get paid peanuts for the amount of responsibility I have. I could go do data entry for not much less!

@Chocolatebuttercream

I don't think it includes junior doctors, I don't know why as they are the ones bearing the brunt in the covid wards.

It does. It’s across the board. It should absolutely be more and I suspect will be. What would really make sense would be a more generous pay rise or a one off bonus for frontline staff.

Minus the temporary bonus, its below inflation. My personal opinion (I work for NHS) is that most staff are criminally underpaid, but especially healthcare assistants and nurses (I am neither of these).

I am on a higher banding than nursing but the pay still does not feel proportionate to the 12yrs I spent in education to be qualified for the job. I could earn easily 5 times the amount in private work but I believe in socialised healthcare.

Just to point out the proposed 3% would be given in stages over 3 years - we aren't talking about 3% all at once. So it is below inflation.

Obviously I think teachers and police should have fair pay too, but they had a raise last year which was put across as a reward for their work during the pandemic. The NHS got nothing then.