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%?

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

That’s an argument for different roles to be differently banded. They are in my profession and tbh I didn’t realise that in nursing they aren’t. Everyone in my area is at least a 6, a few are 7s either because they have additional (postgrad) clinical skills and do specific things the 6s don’t do, or they have a managerial role. I started as a 5 but as I now do a specialist role I’m a 6.
I don’t think it’s an argument that some band Xs did more frontline work during the pandemic so these band Xs should be given a different increase and then we have people on the same band getting a different wage, some of whom will be in the same department/ward. It would meant that an ICU nurse with your skills who worked in your non-COVID ICU would earn less than a nurse without those skills who worked in a named COVID area. How do you even quantify that? We had dedicated “COVID” wards and COVID itu/hdu etc. My area had COVID and non COVID areas for inpatients and many of us were deployed to COVID areas (inc COVID icu) but we weren’t COVID icu staff and didn’t work there full time. In reality COVID was all over. Our “green” stroke unit turned red more often than the traffic lights outside the hospital.
It just doesn’t make sense to me that a band 2 hca or a band 5 nurse or a band 8 matron should be paid differently if they are doing a job of that banding. It does make sense that people with particular skills in particular areas should be upbanded.

@NursePotato
"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."

By OP nurse, do you mean a theatre nurse? Because our theatre nurses (and our ODPs, of which I am one) have regularly been moved over to our ITU during covid when they're suffering with short staff, but when we are desperate for staff they won't come over to us because we are "too specialised" (their words).
Our theatre nurses have been working their socks off. We haven't stopped performing surgeries. Yes, elective lists have been reduced but we've had masses and masses of trauma and emergencies to deal with. We aren't viewed as "frontline" because no one sees us, but I can guarantee we've been working with covid like everyone else.

[quote paintedpanda]@NursePotato
"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."

By OP nurse, do you mean a theatre nurse? Because our theatre nurses (and our ODPs, of which I am one) have regularly been moved over to our ITU during covid when they're suffering with short staff, but when we are desperate for staff they won't come over to us because we are "too specialised" (their words).
Our theatre nurses have been working their socks off. We haven't stopped performing surgeries. Yes, elective lists have been reduced but we've had masses and masses of trauma and emergencies to deal with. We aren't viewed as "frontline" because no one sees us, but I can guarantee we've been working with covid like everyone else. [/quote]
No, I mean outpatients.

@NursePotato
Oh sorry. I did google "OP nurse" in case it was something I didn't recognise and theatre nurses came up.

I 100% agree the NHS has worked hard throughout the last few years, but from a business perspective (you have to remember, whether you like it or not the NHS is a business) 3% is a lot.

Bearing in mind it's an extra £3 for every £100 earned. If everyone in the NHS earned £1000 a month, that would be an additional £30 each per month.

£30 x 1.3 million employees = £39 million a month.

When you consider the current costs of the economy and that not everyone earns £1000 a month... it's a fair amount for the tax payer at the moment

[quote paintedpanda]@NursePotato
Oh sorry. I did google "OP nurse" in case it was something I didn't recognise and theatre nurses came up. [/quote]
It's okay! I was a theatre nurse for a little bit :-)! You sound so passionate about your area!

@NursePotato
I love it. I just wish it paid all the bills. I'm lucky I have a good partner.

[quote paintedpanda]@NursePotato
I love it. I just wish it paid all the bills. I'm lucky I have a good partner. [/quote]
I get what you mean! My husband works in IT and earns so much more with no nights or weekends

@Stompythedinosaur

Well many of us got 0% so I'd take 3% in a heart beat

Have you also had a 20% pay cut over the last ten years? This issue isn't just about this year.

What on earth are you talking about?! Your wages haven't been cut by 20%. Stop engaging in sophistry, it's doing you no favours.

I'd give them a bigger rise out of the extra 350 million a week going to the NHS now we're out the EU.

What on earth are you talking about?! Your wages haven't been cut by 20%. Stop engaging in sophistry, it's doing you no favours.

Where pay is frozen or increases below the rate of inflation, nurses get poorer for doing the same job. Nurses have had a decade of pay freezes interspaced with the odd below inflation "rise". So they are much worse off.

How long would you keep doing the same job for less pay?

@Stompythedinosaur

What on earth are you talking about?! Your wages haven't been cut by 20%. Stop engaging in sophistry, it's doing you no favours.

Where pay is frozen or increases below the rate of inflation, nurses get poorer for doing the same job. Nurses have had a decade of pay freezes interspaced with the odd below inflation "rise". So they are much worse off.

How long would you keep doing the same job for less pay?

This is most people in the UK. Your wages haven't been cut. Your wages haven't risen in line with inflation, like pretty much everyone else.

NHS wages have reduced by far more than the average, and the reductions have gone on longer.

In terms of pay freezes and poor wage increases it is not the government fault that the NMC shafted the nurses with a rubbish deal either. Hence the chap that didn't do nurses a great deal resigned.

@roadwarrior

Inflation this year is 3.7%, so 3% pay rise is effectively a pay cut in real terms.

Yeah and other public sectors workers who have also worked flat out are getting ZERO payrise. Which is a much bigger paycut.

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow

Here's a nice chart that shows how in real terms nurses are paid about -6% below what they were paid in real terms.

Annual wage inflation is 4% and prices are up 3.1% so this 'increase' is in fact another real term decrease.

After all the supposed love for nhs heroes it's a disgrace.

This is repeated across almost the entire economy though, given we had the financial crisis and then Brexit and Covid? Almost everyone has got much poorer in real terms because of those three events.

Everyone knows that our NHS staff are underpaid and it's disgracefully just accepted as so.

My issue is that this actually doesn't include the junior nurses, so the other NHS staff need to be causing a fuss about that for them.
But NO obviously any decent person knows it's not enough.

I would scrap free prescriptions & make them means tested but that may be complicated.

They are means tested.

@Gooriddance

I think some people are forgetting that we also have the privilege of paying to do our jobs as health care practitioners. Degrees are no longer funded. Student loans are a chunk of your salary gone. No further training funded. Have to paying for our own registration fees and portfolios and uniforms and name badges! It’s entire years of your life dedicated to studying the most complex disciplines there are, to get to a salary that isn’t even worth it.

This is the same for almost every professional occupation!

@Getyourarseofffthequattro

I don't think it is enough. NHS wages are notoriously shit. Especially for admin. Also nobody ever gives a shit about us because we aren't on the "front line" so many of us are considering leaving because we could do an easier admin job elsewhere for more money.

I've been doing admin work (legal PA) for over twenty years and decided to give NHS admin a go. The hardest admin job I've ever had in my entire life!

Playing devils advocate, many people in the private sector haven’t had a pay rise for years, particularly the last decade.
The public sector does have pay increment levels, so kind of a pay rise.
I’ve had a 30 pence an hour pay rise in 4 years, that’s all. Nothing since 2017.
There are marvellous people doing miracles in the NHS, but on the flip side, there are people working in other critical jobs ( ok, maybe not saving lives) such as in retail who don’t get pay rises.
Some employers pay the minimum wage and that it.
I’d imagine taxes will raise in April next year, and interest rates will rise, along with NI contributions. So many, people will be poorer.

A big issue is where the money for the 3% pay rose is coming from. It’s been said it’s within current NHS budgets meaning trusts have to find millions of pounds that they haven’t budgeted for. They are probably going to have to make some staff redundant to pay for the rise!

I imagine it’s extremely difficult having a free health service for 65 million people, it’s just too big and too political to make radical changes, there would be too much resistance to change.
Coupled with an ageing population and a bigger population and more demand on it.

The NHS wage debate could go on forever. I mean should a London tube driver get more than a nurse will ever likely earn?
It’s a difficult one.

@Santastealer

A big issue is where the money for the 3% pay rose is coming from. It’s been said it’s within current NHS budgets meaning trusts have to find millions of pounds that they haven’t budgeted for. They are probably going to have to make some staff redundant to pay for the rise!

No how idea how redundancies are possible when there are staff shortages. Anyway, according to the Telegraph more money’s being provided.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said: “The pay uplift will be funded from within the NHS budget, but we are very clear that it will not impact funding already earmarked for the NHS front line.

“You will already know that we gave the NHS a historical settlement in 2018, which saw its budget rise by £33.9 billion by 2023-24, and we’ve provided £92 billion to support the NHS and social care throughout the pandemic.”

The NHS was given an extra £6 billion for the first half of this financial year, to help with Covid-19 pressures, but has not been told what it will get for the second half of the year.