To ask if you support the proposed strike by Nursing and Midwifery staff?

[SeattleGraceMercyDeath]

For the first time in I think 32 years nursing staff have voted to go on strike and midwives, having never voted to strike in their history will be joining them in a four hour walkout from 7am on 13th October.

The NHS pay review recommended a 1% pay rise across the board, yet government decided they could ignore this and only award the rise to those at the top of their band and would take it away again next year. Despite awarding themselves an 11% pay rise after proclaiming they couldn't possibly ignore their review bodies recommendation.

Essential services will still be covered, eg Delivery suite, ITU etc.

Do you support the staff? If you are a frontline healthcare worker will you be striking? I'm not due to work that day but I will be at the picket line showing my support.

Totally support them.

I do support them but the problem with essential service strikes (drs, nurses, midwives, firefighters etc) is that because of the kind of people they are (caring, compassionate) they always cover the emergencies and make sure that no ones life is at risk (which I totally agree with & understand) and that they are just inconvenienced but which means that politicians (who are more heartless & hard-nosed) don't sit up & take notice because they don't really care if the public is inconvenienced (as their own policies already do this). It would be lovely if our politicians had consciences but I'm not sure they do.

Laziness? I fucking give up. On Tuesday I worked 0700-2100 with NO food, only water. I am supposed to work 0730-2000 with an hours unpaid break. I had one wee. Nobody died but some people nearly did. Due to e rostering I did not see my kids awake for three days. I earn less than £10 an hour after tax. I am already accountable for every mistake, every omission. If it's not documented it didn't happen.

Btw we pay tax too! Some people on this thread don't seem to realise that.

But apparently I get a free car and my pension will be tens of thousands a year

Interestingly NMC fees are set to rise in an inflation busting fashion.

Also if we all magically got a new job who would do the stuff we do between sitting on our lazy fat arses eating swan and spending our millions?

Nasty Bastard Tories are not touching the pension scheme

They have.

Also do you know why the public sector has a decent pension scheme. As recognition that they don't pay as well as the private sector.

The private sector then eroded the benefits of the average worker and deflected the attention by pointing at the public sector by saying "oh look, they've got such generous schemes, get angry with them" yet all the while, senior executives still get fat pensions and the rest

And it works with some people because they cannot see the bigger picture.

I've informed my manager I will be striking (thought I wasnt at work and realised my night shift would go into the beginning of the strike) do you know what, it might not make a difference, but I'm doing something instead of just moaning and whinging and that's all I can do right now. So dejected and fed up after another shift with no break and getting away an hour late,, it was only a short shift today though so only 9 hours with no food or drink.

It is possible to oppose the strike and also think something needs to be done about MP's and senior execs pay. They are not mutually exclusive.

And the pension scheme is still very, very generous.

Generous to reflect the fact that nurses work bloody hard. But not as generous as it was.

I too fully support this strike. At the risk of getting lynched I would like to say that NHS managers also have a shit job. Despite what the DM and even some frontline staff think (sorry) they aren't on the mega bucks salaries - ok, maybe the CEO, but the rest of them, the ones who make up most of the management are on the same payscales as frontline staff and have also had the same issues as re-applying for their jobs, downgrading etc etc.

When I worked in NHS management (admittedly some time ago) I regularly worked 12 hour days just to keep my head above the water. I would get upwards of 300 urgent e-mails a day. I had pressure coming down from the senior management of the organisation, from the SHA, from the DH, from the government. I had to deal with increasing expectations and complaints from patients and members of the public - including one incident where I was stalked and threatened. I also had to deal with front line staff who were, justifiably, pissed off because I had to keep cutting services and some would get abusive and regularly tell me that I needed to be sacked and inform me how many nurses etc could be paid for with my salary. Fine, but then, who would have done my job? If the front line are dealing with all the political bullshit that I had to deal with every minute of every day - then how would they have done their job? Interestingly that's something that is never mentioned in the usual NHS management rants in the media.

I never got paid for my overtime. I was a Band 7 on AfC - on less than £30K at the time.

Then I moved to a GP practice as a practice manager and the pressure was even worse, the workload higher, the money less. This wasn't because the GP partners were paying themselves too much, it was because it was a small, rural practice that was stretched to the hilt. Practice income was falling, even then - 3 years ago. Now that practice has closed because they couldn't keep going.

Sorry for the rant, but public sector workers - ALL of them, whatever role they do, from the top to the bottom - work fucking hard. As someone else said, we are also tax payers.

And the only way we would get a "gold plated pension" is if we got £1 for everytime some ignorant tosser whines at us: "we pay your salary"

Yes I was a midwife and I totally support strike action .The bosses keep downgrading staff whilst the responsibities list keeps growing .The midwives have been shouting for years but no one listens .Some very experienced midwives have taken redundancy so managers can balance the books