To be outraged that prison officers get a 4k bonus for Covid overtime, while NHS staff have got nothing?

[PPEcompensatoryeyeliner]

www.lowdownnhs.info/news/covid-19-bonuses-for-prison-staff-what-about-care-workers/

I waa talking to a friend who works in a prison yesterday. They are receiving 4k bonuses for commiting to 9hrs a week overtime for 12 weeks. They are on the same pay scale as nurses.

I don't resent them bonuses, they a do hard and difficult job. But I know so many nurses who routinely do unpaid overtime to make sure things keep running and patients get care, and it's been repeatedly estimated that between 40-50% of nurses do 5hrs unpaid each week. I personally as a ward manager usually work at least an extra hour a day and have done for years, if I don't something is missed.

I think the government knew that NHS and care staff would work for free because we're needed to, and counted on this.

If you regularly work extra without pay, they're never going to pay you more when you do it for free. Your kindness and pride in job is being taken advantage of.

Thewhole rationale of your OP was based on whataboutery OP. It's a bit late to disown it now

I said in my OP I don't resent the bonuses. So this is now the 4th time I've said it on this thread.

I get that you’re saying you want nhs staff to be rewarded as well but it’s pretty obvious this isn’t a reward is it? It’s an incentive. It’s business. They’re offering extra cash to get people to agree to more hours, just like agency nhs staff take on more shifts for extra cash. The alternative is mandating people to work extra anyway which is illegal, or having jails even more short staffed than they already are, which makes the job even riskier for staff and increases the risk of riots

Think this is a pertinent point - it’s not a ‘thanks for doing a great job, here’s something to recognise that !’ but rather ‘if this is the only way we can cover this with the only trained and appropriate people we can get the so be it’ .

So tired of hearing how tough it is for NHS staff. They all chose their profession. Equally tired of all the discounts thrown at them by retailers. I understand that a 10% discount is great for the lower paid but doctors, consultants?? No. There are a huge number of people struggling on very low salaries and wondering if their jobs will exist at the end of the year and all we here is how hard it is for NHS staff.

@Beautiful3 - what do you mean? Higher than what?

NHS pay rates for nurses is highly regulated and standardised across the NHS. Managers can’t just pay them a higher rate. It’s not like working in a pub and your manager bunging you an extra 50 quid because it’s been busy and you worked hard.

NHS nurses are entitled to overtime but my point is that many trusts are so short of money they won’t/cannot afford to pay it so hospital managers may refuse to allow a ward nurse overtime but instead will offer a bank shift which costs less or an agency nurse - which may cost more but comes out of a different budget. It’s not uncommon for nurses to join an agency and do a shift in their own ward as an agency nurse rather than bank/overtime due to the daft way it’s funded.

No prison staff have been privatized and shat on ever since to the point their physical safety is endangered by staff shortages for the sack of cost cutting, profit, and not being able to recruit for the wages and working conditions.

Privatization of public services goes both way, usually you lose compared to remaining employees of the public sector (think NHS cleaners fired and re-hired under a sub contract with lower wages), in this one single case they have got something out of it.

Make no mistake, there is no way this bonus would have been given if staff weren't already on the edge of walking out.

The unpaid work was when I did days in the holidays that I received no pay for (and spent time planning for in advance)

If you looked after key worker children during the school holidays on a rota basis your head teacher should have offered you time off in lieu or extra payment - as per the official guidance to schools.

YABU to expect NHS hospital workers to be paid for the extra work that they do. They are heros, remember?

Just bang some pots outside your window and offer them a discount on coffee. That's just as good as being paid properly for the work that they do.

Nurses are not necessarily paid a higher rate for overtime. I am paid a lower rate in fact.

I dont begrudge prison officers getting a bonus I wouldn't do their job for all the money in the world.
But I just want to correct a few inaccuracies we do not get double time for working bank holidays we get time and 2/3. Ive worked in the NHS for well over 30+ years and many nurses including myself stay past my time by at at least 1 hour 2-3 times week plus I work form home on my days off catching up with admin that I don't have time to do whilst I'm a work all unpaid. I also on a regular basis work 13 hours without getting a break/drink/going to the loo. I like other occupations have been assaulted both verbally and physically on numerous occasions aggressive shouting relatives have become the norm..
But most importantly nursing has changed we now longer do bed baths and and mop brows on a regular basis Im part of a team making life and death decisions, I work in an area where patients deteriorate very rapid, often our medical staff are quite junior and look to me for advise and input as I have done numerous training courses in sone cases the same as doctors and have years of experience all for less than £16 an hour! Having said this my junior doctor colleagues also work very long hours for terrible money.
I can live with most of this but really irks me is that I have to pay to park yy car and if I work more than three tie a week I have to pay £12 a day. We did when covid19 was at its peak get lots of free food etc and lots of dicots in shop personally I only used one but the food was a nice touch oh and we are still parking for free.
Most of us are totally committed to what the NHS stands for and give it our all regardless if what we are paid. A bonus would have been nice but if we get a second wave of Covid 19 we will all do the same thing again.
Good luck to the prison officers I hope they enjoy their bonus. We will never get one of this size the NHS is the biggest employer in Europe and the the 4th to 5th biggest in the world, every 10p in the £1 of NHS budget goes on nurses salaries we just cost to much in the grand scheme of the things to be given a big pay rise or a big bonus.

www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england-leeds-51333461/prison-officers-call-for-change-as-assaults-remain-at-record-levels

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/31/prison-officers-assaulted-30-times-day-violence-self-harm-suicides/

www.theguardian.com/society/2019/dec/28/chaotic-prisons-rise-in-assaults-i-nearly-lost-my-sight

AIBU to be outraged that prison officers get a £4k bonus for overtime, while NHS staff have got nothing?

Nope, no whataboutery there at all.....

You clearly have no idea how hard it is to be a prison officer. They deserve every penny.

YANBU. Nurses shouldn't have emotional pressure put on them to work unpaid hours. No one should.

@tiredwardsister

I dont begrudge prison officers getting a bonus I wouldn't do their job for all the money in the world. But I just want to correct a few inaccuracies we do not get double time for working bank holidays we get time and 2/3. Ive worked in the NHS for well over 30+ years and many nurses including myself stay past my time by at at least 1 hour 2-3 times week plus I work form home on my days off catching up with admin that I don't have time to do whilst I'm a work all unpaid. I also on a regular basis work 13 hours without getting a break/drink/going to the loo. I like other occupations have been assaulted both verbally and physically on numerous occasions aggressive shouting relatives have become the norm.. But most importantly nursing has changed we now longer do bed baths and and mop brows on a regular basis Im part of a team making life and death decisions, I work in an area where patients deteriorate very rapid, often our medical staff are quite junior and look to me for advise and input as I have done numerous training courses in sone cases the same as doctors and have years of experience all for less than £16 an hour! Having said this my junior doctor colleagues also work very long hours for terrible money. I can live with most of this but really irks me is that I have to pay to park yy car and if I work more than three tie a week I have to pay £12 a day. We did when covid19 was at its peak get lots of free food etc and lots of dicots in shop personally I only used one but the food was a nice touch oh and we are still parking for free. Most of us are totally committed to what the NHS stands for and give it our all regardless if what we are paid. A bonus would have been nice but if we get a second wave of Covid 19 we will all do the same thing again. Good luck to the prison officers I hope they enjoy their bonus. We will never get one of this size the NHS is the biggest employer in Europe and the the 4th to 5th biggest in the world, every 10p in the £1 of NHS budget goes on nurses salaries we just cost to much in the grand scheme of the things to be given a big pay rise or a big bonus.

It turns out that all the money raised for the NHS cannot be spent on PPE, ventilators etc. as it is a restriction of the charity arm of the NHS. And it is mostly just sitting in an account somewhere, with a little being spent on new sofas and drinks machines.

Maybe this could be spent on 'paying' for NHS staff parking, and providing bonuses. I know it's not what the money was raised for, but it seems a better use of it then nothing or drinks machines. And I do think that all NHS staff deserve a big thank you! And not just a clap.

I think that it's somewhat of a red herring to try and compare their salaries.
Many are on 20-21k as opposed to 25k. Certainly those that will have been expected to provide the additional hours won't be the higher salaried officers.
Do I think it's wrong? Absolutely not. Their conditions are not great and add in a pandemic, that's close to tortuous.
Whereas nursing staff have in effect opted for this and a pandemic is the moment to excel in this time.

Workers rights have been eroded over the years. If you want better terms you have to use the unions. The unions are much weaker than they use to be and particularly I think women sometimes don’t use their unions in the same way as men do.

Yabu for your goady title. The article says the bonus for 12 wks of overtime is £1750. The £4k includes pay for those hours.

It's pissy for sure. I'm NHS and have worked my arse off during coronavirus and am still doing so because the hospital clinics are not open yet and we are seeing all of their acute overflow as well as our own regular patients. On one day alone last week I drove 200 miles in a day to see people and regularly work 3-4 hours of unpaid overtime everyday to keep up.
I cannot afford to go home until all the work is done for that day or I'd never keep up with it all.
But I cannot see where the money is going to come from to give all of us a 4k bonus.
I used to be a prison officer as well and I can honestly say that my current NHS job is a lot harder and more demanding.

Nope, no whataboutery there at all.....

I've made a comparison between the treatment of two sets of public sector workers in my title, and expressed anger about it.

Can you please explain to me how this is whataboutery? I've opted not to link to the Cambridge definition.

@DivGirl

Prison staff aren't on anything close to same pay as nurses, and nurses were, of course, paid for their overtime (sometimes at a higher rate but that varies).

This isn't a race to the bottom. Comparing prison staff to nurses is like comparing apples to oranges. They're two very different things. I haven't heard of prison staff recieving this bonus, but as someone said above most of them are privately run now.

14 prisons in the U.K. are private, the rest (over 100) are public sector - hardly mostly privately run!

My work (before lockdown...) has involved the odd prison visit, and while I’m passionate about the impact of that work, you could not pay me enough to work in a prison. Some of them are “nice” in that they’re newer, cleaner, a bit more spacious and with better activity provision for the prisoners but they’re still prisons agree with the poster earlier who pointed out they’re not at all cushy.

Yes, NHS staff deserve better pay & I hope will receive some financial recognition for the work they’ve done through this crisis, but it’s a completely separate issue to prison officers getting a bonus in return for 12 weeks of overtime (just sounds like overtime pay to me!)

I also think your comparison is pretty crap, for all the reasons mentioned. Nine hours a week is also a lot more, and about double what you've said half of nurses work overtime (the rest presumably do less) so of course it's treated differently? Staying an hour late is normal in a lot of jobs, doing an extra working day isn't.

I worked in a prison albeit 25 years ago. I could never go back-really tough job.

I do remember the POA (their Union) were very, very active and vocal, and I think this maybe part of this reason this deal was reached. However IIRC they are not allowed to strike.

I'm a MH nurse who's worked in MH secure units and prisons and they're incomparable in terms of conditions, resources and levels of violence. The prisons i've worked in are the hardest environments i've ever worked in and the worst self-harm/violence i've seen has been in prison. Plus the conditions are often completely inhumane.

I work in a mostly consultancy role now so have WFH during CV but when I worked in prisons I was earning far more than the majority of officers, a lot of whom were recruited pratically fresh out of school.

I'm in an area which hasn't been hit hard by CV and i'll be honest, my prison officer friends have had a far worse time due to the crisis. My frontline general nurse friends had a busy couple of weeks at the peak but the rest of the time they haven't had it that hard and they admit that and as senior NHS are paid very well and never do unpaid overtime. Plus they had weeks of saving money due to donated takeaways, food and gifts. As well as free data on their 'phones, up to 50% off weekly shop etc.

Prison staff got fuck all and no recognition either.

Another forgotten area is nursing bank staff. Due to virtually everything other than CV and urgent/emergency work stopping, there have been months where no bank shifts have been needed in entire hospitals, unheard of before. People who have been used to always being able to rely on as many shifts as they needed suddenly found themselves out of work and having to apply for benefits.

"Their conditions are not great and add in a pandemic, that's close to tortuous.
Whereas nursing staff have in effect opted for this and a pandemic is the moment to excel in this time."
I haven't opted to work extra hours without a break/drink/go to the loo for 13 hours, to work more than by contracted hours for no financial reward week in week out or have insufficient equipment medicine etc to support patients and keep my self safe and my colleagues safe. Or to work under ridiculous governmental requirements; breaching in ED, "hot bedding" (where effectively we have two patients in one bed) because we're not allowed to cancel patients coming in for day surgery because we get fined. Putting aside the extra pressures we've all worked under due to Covid 19 and it has been stressful in my trust two staff have died of Covid 19, the NHS has collapsed and we are expected to carry on as if there's nothing wrong.