Are the unions being unreasonable to reject 5% pay offer for nhs staff?

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NHS staff in Scotland have been offered a 5% pay rise (excluding doctors and dentists who have a different pay scale)

Most health care worker unions have said its an insulting offer and should he rejected.

They are looking for a 6 - 14% patristic

Yabu - nhs staff have relatively secure jobs with good benefits and should be grateful they are getting any pay rise

Yanbu - nhs staff are extremely under paid and over worked and given the last 2 years absolutely deserve more than 5%

No they are not.

If it is like in England then NHS workers haven't had decent pay rises since the last Labour government.

While other people will moan - I'm one of them - that they haven't had decent payrises since then, it is not a race to the bottom.

We also need people to want to work for the NHS.

Negotiating pay is not a moral issue. It doesn't matter what randoms think, the job of a union is to get the best pay deal possible for its members.

If we are looking for professions that are paid too much, compared to their value to society, I would not start with health care.

Yanbu. I worked for nhs and left - partly due to the stress (before the pandemic). It wasn’t about the money, but decent pay certainly helps.

I do think we will be waiting forever for it but we absolutely do deserve more.
It is insulting.

YANBU. Wage rises will lead to more inflation. If we get into a wage-price spiral then higher interest rates will be needed to bring inflation down. Government borrowing is already too high to be comfortable. Government debt has been increasing to fun QE, even during the so-called period of "austerity", and then even more to pay for the pandemic. A lot government spending will be needed just to pay interest on its loans. We might even have to endure a recession and declining standards of living.

The UK government is fucked.

The Tory party, under all it's guises, has been in power for far too long.

Their austerity caused the mess in the first place so when the economy is tanking as now we are in a bigger mess.

oops I mean YABU

Neither of your options are quite right IMO. I don't think we should doff our cap and be grateful for any dregs, but equally I think in today's economic climate 5% is reasonable. I was hoping the unions would accept.

I would like the people whose hands I put my life in to be ridiculously well paid please
I don’t want them to be exhausted because they need to pick up extra shifts and overtime to be afford living
And I want them well paid, so it attracts talented people
And I want them to know how fucking grateful we are for them being there in the pandemic
So yeah, fuck the 5%
Double their pay now, and then regular pay rises please, tied to the MPs’ salaries or something (this last part might be stupid but hopefully you get what I mean)

Agree Tories have mis-managed the economy very badly. But austerity has not caused the problems, it's excessive spending. QE was started by Gordon Brown in the 2007-2008 financial crisis, but has gone on far too long. Who would have thought that (electronically) printing money would lead to inflation like it has done every other time in history? I quite liked Brown's fiscal policy at first, being prudent in good times so that government could spend to stimulate the economy during recessions, but he lost the plot when he declared an end to boom and bust.

I got 0.9% private sector, and had been on a freeze for years. It has to be funded somewhere.

As a band 5 nurse I would happily take a 5% pay rise rather than the 6-11% the unions want if they were to actually do something about the staffing levels. At the moment we’re not paid fairly and we’re also understaffed and overworked, something has to give.

This.

@EcoEcoIA

Jeeze, not the old Labour spent all the money shtick.

We're about 15 years too late down the line for that 1. I also thought it was pretty comprehensively proven that austerity did cause a lot of the problems?

If you think we should be reducing wages to reduce inflationary we could start reducing those earning 500k and above first?

@Putonyourshoes

I guess the argument is that they can't do anything about the staffing levels unless they do something about the pay

Vicious circle

I think in the current climate 5% sounds reasonable.

as others have said staffing levels are a bigger problem at the moment.

People should be grateful for getting any pay rise??? What century did you emerge from?

Staffing problems would be improved if so many people weren't leaving for better pay and conditions for equivalent jobs in the private sector.

Pay for qualified professionals in the public sector is generally poor and the pension has been made more expensive for worse benefits, so even that isn't the benefit that it was.

Of course better pay would encourage more people into the sector, but there are other factors too. The abolishment of the original bursary was a huge mistake. If I were handed a deal that promised me a 5% pay rise and the reintroduction of paid for degrees for nurses I’d bite their hands off. Not going to happen though, unfortunately

Will be interesting to see what SNPs next move is.

Currently they aren't budging.

Scottish health secretary Humza Yousaf said: “Our NHS Agenda for Change workforce – like nursing and midwifery staff, porter staff, and therapy staff – have long had the best pay and conditions in the UK, and with today’s offer of a 5% pay rise we’re demonstrating our commitment to ensuring that continues to be the case.

Not sure if his claims are true or not.

@Putonyourshoes

Scotland didn't abolish the bursary. Nursing is a fully paid, bursary degree course in Scotland.

Staffing is also an issue across all staff groups

Absolutely agree with you

NHS pay freezes have meant a 13% cut (the last time we were consulted on strikes which was a couple of years ago). So 5% is still insulting. We're dealing with more than that though, we're under-resourced, under-staffed, and under-valued.
People who work in private settings do earn more on average and have better resources and lower stress. They also work with rich people who are a different bunch to normal people. So please don't compare.

Good bank nurses needs to stop

have long had the best pay and conditions in the UK,

Bollocks.

NHS staff in Scotland are as over witted as anywhere else and have only been very slightly better paid for a couple of years