Insulted key worker wage rises don't include nurses

[nowayhose]

Just what it says really, I'm insulted that police/ fire service/ paramedics are all getting a descent wage rise as recognition for their above and beyond efforts during Cornavirus pandemic, but nurses get bugger all as they're still in the process of getting the 3 year gradual wage increase. (even after this 3 year incremental wage increase, nurses pay will be well below what the other emergency services get)

Private sector nurse here. My team were redeployed for 16 weeks to ICU. Just been told there will be no pay rise for us this year and certainly if the Government had given nurses a pay rise there would be no recognition for the contribution of nurses from the private sector

Police haven't had a pay rise for 3yrs

They deserve it

@lifeafter50

Most nurses are not on Covid wards and have had a lighter workload with the shocking abandonment of patients with other ailments.

Was that of the nurses choosing or were they redeployed like me from their original place of work?

We're getting ready for another potential wave of Coronavirus...........and feeling demoralised and demotivated and thoroughly angry that we're being shafted financially yet again..................and we're all supposed to be A OK with it
Why can't ALL the emergency workers get the same wage increase and ALL the key workers get the same too ????

Because you knew the status of pay reviews for nurses, the rise isn't 'because of COVID' for these roles.

it will never be 'all key workers' because not all are public sector. For example, prison officers are getting a pay increase but my brother is a prison officer with a private company so doesn't get it despite doing the same job during the same pandemic, with the same dangerous criminals... on a woefully low salary. Much less than most nurses I know.

Because neither the government ( who all granted themselves a nice £10,000 extra for the changes they had to make to work from home) nor the public (who have said crap like 'well, you signed up for this!' ) have our back, yet they expect US to have THEIR backs when the bloody chips are down and the pandemic looms large)

The £10k was a spectator piece of hate mongering by the media. They didn't get a £10k extra, additional funds were made available if they were needed to facilitate any adaptations needed in light of covid/lockdown.

There had been a lot of respect shown to the NHS in particular during the lockdown, and I don't think that will disappear for the most part even if the freebies and discounts are fading.

You sound very angry op, perhaps it's the time for you to step away if it having such a detrimental effect on your health.

Nothing for social care workers. Misused union power means office workers getting better pay than frontline workers, and in the case of the Grenfell fire chief, retiring at 50(?) to luxuriate on full pension, on grounds that nobody over that age could do anything active.
There again, misused union power is often astonishing, e.g.calling a strike in case train drivers are insulted by being asked to be sober.

@BojoKilledMyMojo

Also, police and fire service continually put themselves at risk of very serious harm, it isn't a short lived thing during a pandemic.

Firefighters are paid a shockingly low wage for the conditions and nature of the job.

Nurse on an acute elderly ward - regularly get bitten, punched, kicked, karate kicked, hit with walking frames or sticks, have objects thrown at me, sworn at, have urine and faeces thrown at me, pushed on the floor. Have been nursing patients with covid on our “non-covid” ward with inadequate PPE. Earn £24.5k fulltime.

Most nurses are not on Covid wards and have had a lighter workload with the shocking abandonment of patients with other ailments

This is one of the most disgusting things I think I've seen written here for a while!

1. the "shocking abandonment", as you so eloquently put it, was not decided or sanctioned by nurses (or Dr's or admin workers or porters or anyone else on the ground)
2. the vast majority have worked their arses off trying to get as many people cared for as humanly possible around the restrictions imposed on them
3. a small number may have struggled to fill their time - of those most were livid at the waste of resources and inability to carry out their jobs
4. stop reading shit, you're clearly not qualified to separate truth from spin

As for those saying "you've had a pay rise", like most others this followed a pay freeze (i.e. real terms pay cut) of approximately 8 years and still amounted to a below inflation rise. The picture up thread shows it perfectly, the government did a wonderful job of spinning a pay cut (albeit less of a cut than usual) into a pay "rise".

I'm not a nurse. I do work in the NHS though. My department was "closed" with services slowly reopening this week. During "closure" we have continued to care for patients every day, literally 1000s of people each month. We have totally reinvented our service and have not stopped. Also add in the huge changes our trust decided to implement "seeing as you're quiet" and we have probably worked harder than ever. We are restarting now and we are all exhausted, burnt out and demoralised so this news is perfectly timed really. I've no idea how I would feel if I was a nurse on a covid ward.

I'm so pissed off with some of the attitudes shown here I have turned into a "quotes" and (brackets) monster. Sorry!

@Baaaahhhhh what about us district nurses? Who went from home to home with limited PPE. Do we not deserve it?? The people that still went in to patients houses (the most vulnerable) and gave them medication etc??

@lifeafter50

Most nurses are not on Covid wards and have had a lighter workload with the shocking abandonment of patients with other ailments.

Nurse on an acute elderly ward. Receiving and nursing patients with covid despite being designated a “Non-covid” ward. With inadequate PPE. I can assure you we’ve not abandoned any of our patients. Can’t say the same for our management who continue to prevaricate about the “shocking abandonment” of CPR guidelines. Majority of staff have stated we will continue to conduct CPR as usual despite the risks to our safety. Ward managers have been told to “reign their staff in”. Just because staff aren’t on covid wards doesn’t mean they are not caring for patients with covid or are happy with the constraints that covid has placed on them

You sound very angry op, perhaps it's the time for you to step away if it having such a detrimental effect on your health.

No, the opposite, it is time people started being angry - about nursing, about care workers, about dismantling the NHS/Policing, about all of it.

The key worker system of policing, health care, emergency response etc has been propped up by trading on the "drive to do right" of it's employees for so long it is now regarded as normal - the going the extra mile, low wages etc are seen as part of the job how the hell did we end up here?!

@20mum

Nothing for social care workers. Misused union power means office workers getting better pay than frontline workers, and in the case of the Grenfell fire chief, retiring at 50(?) to luxuriate on full pension, on grounds that nobody over that age could do anything active. There again, misused union power is often astonishing, e.g.calling a strike in case train drivers are insulted by being asked to be sober.

That is absolute bollocks. misused union power my arse. The example you give is completely spurious as the requirement for train drivers to submit themselves to random drug and alcohol testing is very well established. In my experience people who whinge about the 'power' of unions have very little understanding of the principle of collective bargaining and the reasons that unions exist. Unions are their members. They exist to protect the employment rights and safety of their members. Just ask yourself who benefits from the anti union stance of our right wing press.

And ...
It shouldn't be a race to the bottom.
Who benefits from pitting workers against workers in this way?
Who benefits from painting public sector workers as work shy with 'gold plated pensions'?
As Martin Luther King said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere

[quote 5amonSunday]@BBCONEANDTWO You can see on your own link B5s start at 24k. They get 27k after 4 years experience. 10 years ago when I qualified it was 21k and had been for some time, so the payrise is barely in line with inflation.

We get good benefits, although the pension scheme isn't nearly as good as it was previously. Benefits don't mean that we are fairly paid for the pressure and responsibility of what we do, especially as nurses graduating now will have a student loan to pay off for the privilege of doing 10000 unpaid practice hours during their training.

but if you look at what carers get who travel to their client's houses it's shocking and they don't get all the other benefits.

Agreed. But that's the problem with our system of privatised care.[/quote]
You have to take into account unsociable hours payments which increases salaries by rather a lot e.g.:

Unsocial hours payments

All time on Saturday (midnight to midnight) and any week day after 8 pm and before 6 am

Pay band 1. Time plus 49%
Pay band 2. Time plus 43%
Pay band 3. Time plus 36%
Pay band 4-9. Time plus 30%

All time on Sundays and Public Holidays (midnight to midnight)

Pay band 1. Time plus 97%
Pay band 2. Time plus 85%
Pay band 3. Time plus 72%
Pay band 4-9. Time plus 60%

Link: www.nhsemployers.org/pay-pensions-and-reward/agenda-for-change/nhs-terms-and-conditions-of-service-handbook/unsocial-hours-payments

These payments are made even if staff are off sick or on holiday. That's a lot of money. Just saying the likes of supermarket workers who work nights/weekends/bank holidays don't get these types of enhancements.

Band 5/6 are on more than £24k a year. Band 5 is between £27K rising to £33K a year.

Band 5. On £24.5k fulltime. £12 odd an hour for the huge responsibility of monitoring patients for deterioration, taking action when patients deteriorate, reporting to doctors that you really aren’t happy with a patient as you’ve explained several times before and will they please come and see the patient now preferably without that “what the fuck do you want now” look on your face, spending several hours with that patient trying to save their lives to the detriment of all your other patients, keeping the patient calm because what is happening to them is fucking terrifying and you’re the only person actually trying to explain what is happening, speaking to their families, consoling their families, recording as accurately as possible all the above in case of legal action. £12 something an hour. And in the case of my fucking amazing healthcare support colleagues, £9 an hour.

Why are nurses acting like they had no idea what the job entails or how much they're paid and it's some sort of unpleasant surprise?

@CaptainSensiblesRedBeret

Band 5/6 are on more than £24k a year. Band 5 is between £27K rising to £33K a year.

Band 5. On £24.5k fulltime. £12 odd an hour for the huge responsibility of monitoring patients for deterioration, taking action when patients deteriorate, reporting to doctors that you really aren’t happy with a patient as you’ve explained several times before and will they please come and see the patient now preferably without that “what the fuck do you want now” look on your face, spending several hours with that patient trying to save their lives to the detriment of all your other patients, keeping the patient calm because what is happening to them is fucking terrifying and you’re the only person actually trying to explain what is happening, speaking to their families, consoling their families, recording as accurately as possible all the above in case of legal action. £12 something an hour. And in the case of my fucking amazing healthcare support colleagues, £9 an hour.

Maybe the banding system is wrong - maybe they should make a bigger difference from the start of the band from 4 to 5 - if I were a nurse it would be easier and less stressful being a band 4 with hardly any difference in payment.

Regarding the doctors I guess they are treated as gods usually but a band 5/6 nurse probably has more years of experience than them and the doctors will be on a lot more (what do you reckon around £30 an hour?). It's like that in a lot of work places when someone e.g. a lawyer treats the admin staff like crap. Don't know what the solution is and not sure if it's more of a British thing or if that's always the case world wide.

Why are nurses acting like they had no idea what the job entails or how much they're paid and it's some sort of unpleasant surprise? hmm.

Yeah, what did people think would happen once they got their pin and started working, an extra £10k per annum or something . I agree that HCAs and carers are underpaid though.

@nowayhose

It's so demoralising

We're getting ready for another potential wave of Coronavirus...........and feeling demoralised and demotivated and thoroughly angry that we're being shafted financially yet again..................and we're all supposed to be A OK with it
Why can't ALL the emergency workers get the same wage increase and ALL the key workers get the same too ????

Because neither the government ( who all granted themselves a nice £10,000 extra for the changes they had to make to work from home) nor the public (who have said crap like 'well, you signed up for this!' ) have our back, yet they expect US to have THEIR backs when the bloody chips are down and the pandemic looms large)

Quite frankly, F**K that !!

I, for one, do not plan to stay in the NHS to get screwed over at the expense of my health, finances and mental health..............and I'm definitely NOT alone in feeling like this.

Good luck with finding a job - any job - in the private sector any time soon. Particularly if you are wanting to earn more than a Band 5 / 6 salary with all the associated unsocial hours payments etc etc.

You have to take into account unsociable hours payments which increases salaries by rather a lot

‘Cos 30% of £12 an hour makes up for working 12.5 hours with inadequate resources, worried about what will happen when it all goes tits up.

Fuck me, I don’t expect everyone to think we’re angels but I had no idea how some people really hate the NHS and it’s workers.

Nurses have agreed a separate deal which is a higher percentage than the others, so no they haven’t been ignored.

@Sisterwives

Why are nurses acting like they had no idea what the job entails or how much they're paid and it's some sort of unpleasant surprise?

Why say this Sisterwives? It may be the reality but that doesn't mean to say that it's right and things should be improved. Saying this is the equivalent of saying I was beaten as a child and it didn't do me any harm You're a nurse. You know how hard it is.

But then by that logic extra pay wouldn't help. The real issue is understaffing, lack of adequate resourcing, and lack of support personnel who can try and ensure the safety of nurses. Not a small % payrise.

@Staplemaple

But then by that logic extra pay wouldn't help. The real issue is understaffing, lack of adequate resourcing, and lack of support personnel who can try and ensure the safety of nurses. Not a small % payrise.

This is what's needed - I so agree. Instead of running with not enough staff they should run at a full complement of staff - no pay rise but not as much stress for the staff that are working.

Even if they gave a 10% pay rise but the nurses were still under the pressure that's been described here - they would end up ill and go off sick.

Also maybe not have as many senior managers but more ward staff.

Nurses choose to go into nursing because they care about people and it is a vocation, they don't do it for the money.

I have heard this several times, and lots of people believe it.

Nursing currently is not an attractive prospect for many potential students, which is shown by the lack of qualified nurses. This is going to get worse as so many members of the workforce are nearing retirement.

Patch it up with Nursing Associates seems to be the plan thus far.

I don't hate NHS workers, I am one! But in the middle of a global pandemic when people are losing their livelihoods and then their homes, I am frustrated with the frequent threads from nurses moaning about not getting something they think (usually incorrectly) someone else is getting, and acting like they didn't know it would be hard work for not great pay as if they were tricked into the profession or something.

When I started 20 odd years ago everyone even then knew it was hard work and you wouldn't make a fortune. It's only got worse since then so i'm genuinely confused by nurses who've only been doing it a few years seeming shocked and resentful its a hard, relatively poorly paid job. It's not something that happens accidentally, you go to Uni for 3 years and complete however many practice hours it is now so you see what the work is like and know what the salaries are.