NHS Pay award

[Thedogscollar]

So this is what they have come back with from the insulting 1% offer by increasing it to a paltry 3%.
Workers are leaving in their droves we have a massive deficit in nursing and midwifery which is worsening daily.

I work in the South East of England, we are hugely affected with shortages in staffing, virtually every 12.5 hrs shift I do we cannot have a break due to work acuity and lack of staff. We have junior staff in tears with the pressure put upon them.
We aren't paid for our break and we are hard pushed to get it back as time owing. We cover empty shifts on the bank over and above our contracted hours as we know how hard it is for our colleagues in there.
We are all reaching breaking point some are there now and gone off sick. It is exhausting physically but more so mentally as you know before you even get to work what it's going to be like.

I have payslips going back 10 plus years and in that time my salary has barely changed and I am at the top of my band.

Our management team held an urgent meeting the other day to discuss the crisis going on within our trust with staffing and work acuity. Nothing was really dealt with just more management speak.

This government has to look after the NHS staff that have given so much and still are. Staff retention is in crisis and by offering this paltry pay rise they are doing nothing to stop this disaster becoming a momentous catastrophe resulting in even worsening patient safety levels being eroded even more.

How on earth can this government justify 30 plus billions for track n trace and HSS yet not offer a decent pay rise to NHS workers and in that I include care workers too.

Boris and co should hang their heads in shame but as per they think they are doing so well in offering us anything.

I'm sure I will have people coming on now to say they have lost jobs and taken paycuts and for that I am truly sorry but this cannot be used as an arguement for a huge group of essential workers being financially and emotionally abused by their employer which is exactly what this government are doing.

@baldafrique

Did someone actually just say that the average nurse will get an extra £1000 a month from this?! What the fuck are you on. It will be like £60 tops. I'm speechless! £1000 a month!!!!!!!! WTAF.

A combination of poor reading comprehension and bias against NHS staff, I think. Wants to think they are all sitting on fat piles of cash demanding more.

Absolutely disgraceful post. I cannot believe someone actually wrote that.

Yanbu but a pay rise won't really help improve the job. You need a pay rise AND investment to train/retain/recruit more staff AND a complete overhaul of systems/structure.

There are so many factors that affect the NHS from people living longer, to the UK spending less per head than most other countries, to the removal of other public health services that result in more people turning to the NHS, that improving things almost looks like an impossible job.

The only way out is restructure services to suit current needs and to fund it properly, but that won't happen with tories in power (and I'm not sure enough of the public will ever support a raise in taxes to make things happen).

The funny thing is I was reading about England's water companies and it is a very similar story. Under Thatcher they realised they needed to invest a huge amount into the system and would need to raise taxes by about 2p in the pound to bring it up to scratch. This was a complete no-no for the Tories (and the public) so they sold them off and the public ended up paying the equivalent of 4+p in the pound when the private companies raised their bills. I can see a similar scenario for the NHS unless the public accept we need to fund it properly and vote for a party willing to do so.

Lots of people in the private sector are getting pay rises - they have to so that companies can keep staff. DH is getting 5%

The conditions we have to work under make the 3% more unpalatable. The lack of staff, the lack of breaks, the fact that nurses also take on the jobs of so many other HCP's - we are physios, phlebotomists, OTs, porters, catering, domestics, psychologists etc etc. And on top of that we are now dealing with angry relatives shouting at us because they don't agree with the restrictions on visitors that remain in place.
The feeling of dread on walking into work to see how many staff are on duty is debilitating. We need more staff to keep patients safe and the continued lack of a decent wage does not help recruitment.

I assume the person meant £1,000 per year based on a band 5 nurse who earns about £30k.
I don't know anyone who ever got a £1,000 a month increase in any job!

@Stompythedinosaur

The propose pay increase is 3% spread over the next three years, not 3% in one year. This is after a decade of pay cuts which have resulted in a nurse of my grade being paid 20% less than they were ten years ago.

There is no way to seperate whether nurses are leaving because of pay or because of the difficulties of the job - the pay is poor so there aren't enough nurses, which means every shift you are understaffed and having to do work intended for several nurses. Pay is clearly not a seperate issue to the staffing crisis.

I didn't realise that it was to be spread over 3 years. That's even more of an insult.

Inflation is currently at 2.5%, so nurses will be 1.5% worse off, in real terms, than they were a year ago.

The public sector has had below inflation pay rises for 10 years or more. The salary for the job I used to do is now £27,000. When I was appointed in 1991, the salary was £17,000. Adjusted for inflation, that would be £37,400 today.

Someone doing the same job now would be a hell of a lot worse off than I was, and that's before factoring housing costs, which aren't included in the prices used to measure inflation and have risen much more than retail prices.

The £49k house I was able to buy on my £17k salary is worth £475k today.

The majority of staff on my ward don’t feel we get paid enough to put up with what we do tbh. It’s a hard job, you aren’t appreciated, you get constant abuse, there’s little money so the ward areas look shabby abs need work. We ask and are on a ‘waiting list’ I literally don’t stop from 7-8pm on a shift quick lunch/dinner to I can eat then I’m back running around trying to get as much of what needs done done so the night shift don’t have it all to do as there are less of them.

I’d say 50% of staff nurses on my ward are looking to either retrain, move into community or leave nursing. One nurse got a job in Lidl and is much happier, says something when you’d rather sit behind a till than do the job you’ve trained 3/4 years for and worked in for 15/20 years.

I think nhs staff as a whole are under appreciated and taken for granted by management, by the government by the public and everyone is stressed and fed up. More people who leave aren’t being replaced so staffing levels aren’t safe and people are suffering, the staff left are then becoming burnt out and going off sick or leaving too it’s a vicious cycle.

Most nurses / NHS clinical staff get overtime, training allowances, shift allowances etc on top of their salaries & are allowed to do private work on top of their NHS work. That’s why salaries are lower and of course people on this thread seem to have forgotton all this.

I have a lot of nurses and paramedics in my family and all of them are raking in 50K a year minimum (even the ones not in London) on a shift that is not much longer than mine per day. But the government has decided NHS staff > Nursery Practitioners even though my job is just as important but in a different way (without me most nurses wouldn’t be able to work).

So yes I do think NHS staff are lucky. Without people like me people like you wouldn’t be able to work, but despite having a degree my salary is peanuts, I don’t get pay rises, and I’m lucky to get paid overtime. I love my job, don’t get me wrong, but we work just as hard as NHS staff.

I think this was the time to differentiate front line clinical workers from support functions.

I'm an NHS worker. During COVID I have worked incredibly long hours, faced hugely stressful deadlines to enable services. But I have never been put at risk of COVID.

I didn't campaign for a high pay rise because I feel that despite the above I had a safe environment, a busy and interesting job, I was not furloughed or made redundant so didn't face financial challenges. I can't justify increased spend for me when it is clear the country is going to be hugely financially challenged in the next few (potentially many) years and others may need it more.

I would prefer the NHS payrise to be targeted at the lower paid and the front facing roles.

Sure I'd love a pay rise in line with inflation but others may need it more right now.

Considering a lot of workers haven't had a pay rise in years I think it's more than generous. My DH hasn't had a pay rise in 5 years.

They’re the people that keep us alive

See it's this kind of hyperbole which causes frustration. Many occupations are essential to keeping us alive and healthy; those who work in the sewage industry for a start. Refuse disposal workers. Lorry drivers who deliver food and drugs to supermarkets. The list goes on and on but it's some NHS workers who try to manipulate the agenda.

I love my job, don’t get me wrong, but we work just as hard as NHS staff.

Unless you’re a care worker I very much doubt that.

I just worked out the hourly rate for a band 1 nurse, using the standard public sector hours of 37.5 pw.

It came to £9.23. Minimum wage (I refuse to call it "living wage", because it isn't) is now £8.91.

So a graduate, after 3 years of training, gets a few pence per hour more than the lowest paid adult workers in the country, and is tens of thousands in debt for the privilege. The difference is barely enough to buy a coffee a day.

I'm beyond disgusted.

@Justcallmebebes

Private sector - no pay rise for 3 years now. Cry me a fucking river

Thankyou so much for your helpful and insightful comment. As you may or may not have read in my OP I am genuinely sorry for people receiving nothing from this government but that does not make it right that the largest group of essential workers in the country are once again abused emotionally as they know our loyalties lie with our patients and abused financially as my wages have hardly altered at all over the past 10 years.

@ChainJane a £12k a year pay rise for 3%?!
Give over will you! £1k a year maybe!

They start on Band 5 @LakieLady. They’re still not paid enough though.

How on earth can this government justify 30 plus billions for track n trace and HSS yet not offer a decent pay rise to NHS workers and in that I include care workers too.

Because you're not supposed to be in it for the money silly! You're supposed to be ecstatic that you are doing the job and that should be enough! Never mind the bills you need to pay or life you'd like to have outside work, in fact how unreasonable you want a life outside of work! Or the training and ongoing training and accountability you have, you're supposed to do it for love and if you don't, well you're in the wrong job!
^ that is sarcastic btw, I'm paraphrasing a lot of attitudes I've seen towards health and social care workers ^

I don't begrudge (though my next comments may seem that way) NHS workers any pay rise at all, and I think 3% considering the lack of pay rises in preceding years is no where near enough in normal times, never mind what's been happening the last 18 months or so.

But, I'm a care worker in the private sector and I won't be getting anything at all because it's down to the individual employer to do and who's going to cut profit to give me a payrise?!
Even if fees and funding are increased, it's still down to the individual employer to increase pay and I don't think that's going to happen unless the government introduce a minimum wage just for care workers, which is about as likely as pigs flying.

That said, it doesn't mean I don't think the NHS shouldn't have a payrise because I'm not, we all deserve one, it's just more likely the NHS will receive one.

Society will never learn though, they'll be blaming the workers for poor care when staffing reaches crisis point rather than seeing what's really causing it all.
Sad state of affairs.

Leaving to do dog walking is popular! £10 per walk, 4 dogs at a time. Less stress for sure.

It's not just the pay it's the constant demands to do more, learn ever changing systems, introduced because the management have to do "something" so they change stuff, causes chaos, then they change it all back.
It's the demands to meet revalidation, meet patients and relatives expectations in a system that is falling apart.
The NHS is kicked about by politicians as well,
There were 56 covid cases admitted to my hospital over the weekend. Yet Boris thinks its a great time to ditch masks.

3% on a £100k salary is £3k PER YEAR. Then take away tax on that.

3% on a 100k salary translates to about £120-150 per month in hand!

The £49k house I was able to buy on my £17k salary is worth £475k today

And that's an important point, LakieLady It isn't that OP and her colleagues are poorly paid - on the contrary she is on a good salary for national standards - it's the cost of housing (buying or renting) that is at the root of the problem. People on above average salaries can't buy houses and rent takes a huge portion of their take home pay.

OP you won't get an argument from me. You and your colleagues deserve so much better than you've been given. Credit to any NHS staff still turning up to work each day over the last 10 years of utter shit.

@ChainJane

3% seems pretty generous to me considering many people in the private sector are getting nothing at all. The BBC report I read said the average nurse would be getting an extra thousand a month because of it.

NHS staff are in the fortunate position that their jobs are never going to be made redundant, a comfort few employees have these days.

3% increase equating to an increase of £1000pcm would mean a current salary of over £33k per month, or £400,000 per annum. Any nurses here get that?

@Ozanj

Most nurses / NHS clinical staff get overtime, training allowances, shift allowances etc on top of their salaries & are allowed to do private work on top of their NHS work. That’s why salaries are lower and of course people on this thread seem to have forgotton all this.

I have a lot of nurses and paramedics in my family and all of them are raking in 50K a year minimum (even the ones not in London) on a shift that is not much longer than mine per day. But the government has decided NHS staff > Nursery Practitioners even though my job is just as important but in a different way (without me most nurses wouldn’t be able to work).

So yes I do think NHS staff are lucky. Without people like me people like you wouldn’t be able to work, but despite having a degree my salary is peanuts, I don’t get pay rises, and I’m lucky to get paid overtime. I love my job, don’t get me wrong, but we work just as hard as NHS staff.

We get no overtime or training allowances of which I've never even heard of. Yes we receive extra money for working nights as does any worker and equally extra for weekends and public holidays tho contrary to popular opinion we do not get double time on bank holidays. We also almost spend every Xmas with strangers rather than our own families but we knew what we were getting into when we started our careers. This post was not meant to be divisive but it seems some people on MN can't ever see the bigger picture. This crisis will ultimately and is affecting us all right now and gir the foreseeable future. Staff retention should be top of their agenda and by offering another below inflation pay rise they are doing nothing to help this disaster from worsening.

@LakieLady

I just worked out the hourly rate for a band 1 nurse, using the standard public sector hours of 37.5 pw.

It came to £9.23. Minimum wage (I refuse to call it "living wage", because it isn't) is now £8.91.

So a graduate, after 3 years of training, gets a few pence per hour more than the lowest paid adult workers in the country, and is tens of thousands in debt for the privilege. The difference is barely enough to buy a coffee a day.

I'm beyond disgusted.

Graduates do not start on band 1 - they start on band 5