@caringcarer
Last April Hancock.wrote of the £15billion debt the NHS had run up. The debts our country has run up with furlough, self employed money scheme, Eat Out to Help Out, business grants and UC £20 per week is enormous and we as a country will probably spent 25 years+ paying it back. Our children and even our grandchildren will inherit this debt. Nurses have already been paid 12 percent pay rise over 3 years when others have only had 1 or 2 percent or even been.on pay freeze. This year public servants such as Police and Teachers and civil servants are on a pay freeze. Even MP's turned down their pay rise. Nurses get above average pay. I am not saying they don't deserve more, but others deserve more too. Care workers do a similar type of work but for minimum wage, supermarket workers face many different people every day, and warehouse workers work in warehouses and some with no ventilation. They worked hard through pandemic too but also are badly paid, often earning half the salary of nurses. Nurses can't have 12 percent pay rise because the country cannot afford it. They get decent final/average salary pensions. Many in the private sector are loosing their jobs and do not have anywhere near such good pensions. Once we can get economy back on track and if we can produce growth we can be more generous with pay awards then.
People seem to misunderstand (intentionally?) the last 3 year pay deal for NHS staff. It was for almost all NHS staff, not just nurses, as almost all NHS staff are on Agenda for Change contracts. The 12% claimed as the pay rise is simply not true. Some of the lowest paid staff (domestics, housekeepers), who were on Band 1 salaries, received a proportionally higher pay rise than most as Band 1 was abolished. A top Band 5 nurse (physio, paramedic, dietitian etc) in 2015 earned £28,180; this had increased to £30,615 last April - that is approximately 8.5%. For a top Band 6 nurse (or other health professional), the pay rise was less than that. For someone to be top of Band 5, that means they have been a registered nurse (dietitian, OT etc) for a minimum of 7 years. I haven't worked the pay rise out for each of the pay points. Nurses do not get final salary pensions, certainly not the majority of them. All NHS staff under a certain age were transferred to the 2015 pension which is a career average pension. I spent more than the first 10 years of my nursing career earning under £30,000. I believe that older NHS staff retiring about now are on pensions related to their average salary over the last three years (though could be wrong).
Whilst a 12.5% pay rise would be nice, I do think it is unrealistic. But, I agree that we as a country have managed to find a significant amount of money to pay people to sit at home for the last year (my friend was gloating as he has to carry annual leave over into the upcoming financial year as he hasn't needed to take any whilst on furlough). I get that it is not fair to leave people without any income, but likewise it isn't fair to have received pay to sit at home without working. Perhaps this money should have been loaned to people, interest-free, who were unable to work over the last year.
Other than raising the national minimum wage, the government cannot do anything about the pay of care workers, retail staff nor warehouse staff as they are employed by private companies.