To think the NHS "pay deal" is sugar-coated shite?

[SplitterBug]

The government and NHS employers are spinning this as a massive pay rise - having looked at the documents, I'm not so sure.

I'd implore all NHS workers affected to look at the details (on NHS Employers website) before deciding which way to vote. A lot of devil in the detail. A lot of questions still unanswered.

Firstly - the 6.5% over three years works out at 2.1% compounded per year - i.e. below inflation.

Secondly - the large % rises being quoted by the media for certain pay points completely ignore the fact that these staff would previously have had incremental pay rises anyway - e.g. a Band 5 nurse starting at 22128 would progress to 26970 under the new "pay deal" - stated to be a 21.88% rise over 3 years. But under the old increment system they'd have progressed with increased experience up to 25551 anyway. So the pay rise is actually only 5.55% (i.e. less than inflation).

Thirdly - the increments within bands will now require hoop-jumping, target-meeting. How challenging will this be?

Fourthly - the lower paid bands 1-3 are having a REDUCTION in their antisocial hours percentage pay premium which will claw back some of their rise.

(Not affected personally, but many people I know will be).

YANBU. some of the sound bites are ridiculous. Some yearly increases are not even equal to what some city earners spend on a night out. But it's a result for the Tories as they get the headlines and we all squabble amongst ourselves for scraps from the master's table and miss the bigger picture.

Well it’s a damn sight more than I’m getting so I’m finding it hard to sympathise. The cost of living has gone up just the same for many other people

It's a completely shit deal for people who have seen their pay progressively cut in real terms for eight years. No wonder the NHS is haemorrhaging staff.

its not the staff count has gone up every year now the biggest employer in the world with 1.5 million people

i have a simple rule if you dont like your job get a new one

Well I have done. So have many others which is half the issue. Got myself a nice private sector non healthcare post with better pay, better pension and more holiday.

Still on the bank at the local hospital to keep my registration but can't see me going back to healthcare as a substantive role.

Opionated (?opinionated) rising numbers of staff and a rising proportion of staff to patients is not the same thing. The population needing health care is rising which means a cut in staff in real terms.

Front line whole time equivalent numbers of staff have not gone up. There is a real staffing crisis.

www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/02/nhs-staffing-crisis-70000-go-missing

I was at a conference recently where they said to combat the staffing crisis the nhs needed to recruit something like 40% of school leavers for the next 4 years.

touchstoneblog.org.uk/2017/02/can-workforce-strategy-solve-nhs-staffing-crisis/

I'd be quite happy with the deal the NHS workers have got.

Our latest pay rise was 1.9% & that's higher than past years. Some years we haven't had a rise at all.

It's not just the Public Sector that have these issues, but they're more likely to just sit there & gripe rather than moving elsewhere & having to be rated on actual performance....

Got myself a nice private sector non healthcare post with better pay, better pension and more holiday.

You'd be stupid not to!

Wouldn't you???

If I were an NHS worker i would be very careful about how much I spout off about this offer as you will find many of your public sector colleagues rapidly losing sympathy for you. Take the offer. It's the best you're going to get.

It's not a bloody race to the bottom.

Staff retention is at all time low, working conditions are poor and clinical responsibility is ever increasing whilst senior posts and promotion opportunities are being cut.

I don't think this is enough, but I certainly don't think we're going to get any better. It does feel like a shit deal for experienced staff at the top of their band... but higher starting salaries should help recruitment and that can't be a bad thing.

opinionated do you have trouble understanding numbers? Oh and don’t worry lots of NHS staff who aren’t happy with pay and conditions are certainly leaving and have been doing so in large numbers for the last few years. So make sure you don’t do any moaning if you or your loved ones can’t get the care or treatment you need.
So glad I got out, I’m starting at the bottom of a totally new career in the private sector and I’m so much happier!

I'm four months off qualifying as a band 5 registered nurse and I won't even get a say in this. I would definitely vote yes though!

40,000 nursing vacancies, opinionated.

Opionated (?opinionated) rising numbers of staff and a rising proportion of staff to patients is not the same thing. The population needing health care is rising which means a cut in staff in real terms.

then blue lady should of said that she said . No wonder the NHS is haemorrhaging staff. it simply is not losing staff as evidence here www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-staffing-numbers defiantly not losing large amounts of staff in an uncontrollable way

You're right it's not a race to the bottom. But staff still sign up for the jobs, places on the university courses are ridiculously competitive, people still want to come from abroad to work for the NHS.

What grips my shit is people sign up for these careers (and I'm in a career with a similar number of whingers in it!) Knowing the working conditions and knowing the rough pay scales. They sign up to an employer knowing how their pay grades work. Then complain that it doesn't match their lifestyle.

It's the moaners who put people off and drop morale. I wish people would realise this.

I stated a fact, opinionated. It's not advisable to tell people what they "should of said" when they said precisely what they meant.

But many of us have been in the NHS for a while now, and believe me it is very different to what it was a few years ago. You can't possibly appreciate how low staffing is until you experience it.

Exactly scared. It is a completely different nhs now

I think the solution is the pump more money into prevention and community services and also into social services. Support people before they need the serious level acute treatment and support people to manage their needs at home.

But social care and community enterprises will never get the funding because the public hate them!

If I was a nurse or AHP or similar I wouldn't be happy with this deal. But being perfectly honest if we were offered the same deal in NI I would be all over it.

I'm a low band 2 clerical worker, I'm basically on minimum wage. I love my job but I cannot afford to stay in it much longer. Things are much much tighter financially than I anticipated when I accepted the job offer. On the face of it (and I know the devil is in the detail) this would be a 20%+ pay rise for me over 3 years. I wouldn't have to start looking elsewhere and could hopefully stay and progress onward within the nhs, which was what I wanted when I took the job.

But others don't come out of it nearly as well, and that's not fair at all.

How dare we moan about a real terms pay cut, eh? How silly of us NHS workers to think that we should be fairly recompensed for the bloody hard and often thankless work that we do. My department is never fully staffed, because people no longer work under the conditions that we have. Which me the rest of us work harder and are spread more thinly. There are plenty of threads on MN bemoaning the state of the NHS, when I am expected to do the work of two people for an eroding pension and decreasing standard of living. I'm at the top of my band, have been for years, so I gain barely anything from this. To go up to the next band would be a step out of clinical into management. I'm not a manager, I studied for a clinical role, plus where are these magical management jobs we could step into if we worked harder? In my trust, the number of team managers have been halved to save money, with people losing jobs and those left managing large numbers of staff for a fraction of what they would get if they were doing equivalent in the private sector.
I could go into the private sector, but then who's going to give your mum / husband / child the input they need?
But yeah, we should be grateful and shut up

Spot on Pride.

I haven't looked into it in great detail as I'm in NI and it's looking like once again we will get sweet FA from it. Top of my banding so no increments or pay rises for me. We are already paid well below our colleagues in the rest of the UK due to our pay being frozen for longer. This will just widen the gap and make the mainland and even more attractive option for our graduates.