Nurses taking Strike Action

[shmiz]

AIBU to believe the public will be supportive of Nurses taking Strike Action ?
Nurses are being asked to vote YES to strike action by the biggest nurses union RCN
www.rcn.org.uk/Get-Involved/Campaign-with-us/Fair-Pay-for-Nursing/Latest-updates

We have 2 HCA's if we are lucky per shift, so we all muck in, the team is trying to keep morale up although it's pretty difficult at the moment.

Out of interest, how much of a pay rise are you getting and what is the difference between your wage and those you are offering 5%? How much profit is your company making ?

@FriedDuck

@Topgub

Senior managers will get a 5% rise the same as everyone else. That is all that is affordable when you’ve got soaring costs across all areas.

Where people think the money is available to fund double digit pay rises for the NHS or anyone else when the economy was in lockdown for 2 years.

Perhaps the unions demanding pay rises should’ve thought about that when they demanded never ending lockdowns.

You didn't answer the other 2 questions @FriedDuck

I'm also wondering if you consider yourself appropriately paid for a 'senior manager'

And if you earn more than a nurse

@FriedDuck

@Topgub

All staff, including me, are paid commensurately with their role and contribution to the business.

In an ideal world, there could be huge pay rises for everyone. However, that is just not affordable, particularly when hundreds of billions have been spent on lockdown.

A 5% rise would bring the average salary for nurses to not far off £40,000, which in my view is very fair considering the qualifications required for the role.

You're still not answering the questions.

Whats the gap between your wage and the lowest paid staff? What are the profits?

What do you earn and what are your qualifications?

Unlike you, nurses are not paid commensurately with their role and contribution to the 'business'.

And average wages are meaningless

“Qualifications required for the role”? What would they be? Degree or Masters? Extra advanced qualifications post qualifying? Prescribing, diagnosing, advanced life support inc. opening a chest, teaching, mentoring ….. I could go on.
And it would be far from an average salary of £40k because the average nursing salary is nowhere near that 🤣🤣

@Rubystyles

As far as I can see, you can get onto nursing courses with DDD at A-level. Very few other pathways on offer with those qualifications would provide the opportunity to earn the sums of money in nursing, particularly at management level.

I needed BBC as a minimum entry so im not sure thats true.

Nursing is a degree qualification.

The role is extremely complex. Mentally and physically exhausting.

I'm not really sure how a levels are relevant

”Sums of money in nursing” 🤣🤣 god …. Please stop reading the Daily Mail, I hate to break it to you but nurses don’t make sums of money 😂 but please do tell me how much this is, I’d love to know!

You generally need 3 A Level passes to complete a nursing degree (all above D) not sure where you’ve found that! But I love the lack of acknowledgment from all the other qualifications I mentioned

I've had a look, I can't see any nursing degrees in England that ask for 72 UCAS points (DDD) there are some in Scotland and some with a foundation year built in (so basically additional A-level level study).

Most nursing roles at B7 (starting salary 41k) and above ask for masters level education. These are ward manager level roles.

For a random example of "another pathway" to compare to:

A store manager at Aldi earns 48-63k so staring on more than a band 7 nurse will ever earn. They advertise that role with no specific qualifications needed and suggesting previous managers have had GCSEs or vocational qualifications. They also mention if you hold a degree at 2:1 you could join their area manager programme (81k with 5 years experience).

My nursing degree was BBC minimum entry requirement. That was nearly 15 years ago admittedly, but I don't know anywhere that would have accepted 3 D's.

Regarding bed making - 25 bed ward might have 3/4 hca's on a shift, it wouldn't be fair to make them do all the beds - they'd get nothing else done! There isn't a 'housekeeping' role in our trust, only domestics that do cleaning and give out meals. Otherwise nurses and hca's are your lot. We are a team so we help each other.

@Mandatorymongoose

The difference is that Aldi area managers can be moved around the country to wherever they are required. Most nurses like to stay in the areas they grew up in.

Personally I would launch a ‘flying squad’ of nurses who could be moved around the counter to wherever they are needed. They would be paid £50,000 and all accommodation and travel costs would be covered while on deployment.

This would be a great flexible resource to support when there is a capacity issue or incident in one area of the country. During covid for example you had staff sitting idle in some places while nightingales remained closed due to staff shortages elsewhere.

I would have thought that most store managers stay at the store they are based in generally? And area managers cover a specific area which they will travel round. Similar I guess to managers within the NHS who cover multiple locality teams (ICBs can cover quite large areas)

I am not sure what evidence there is that nurses like to stay where they grew up any more than any other people?

Anyway, I don't know enough about that to comment really, my point was around qualification levels v pay / progression pathways.

The "flying squad" you describe seems to be a bit like agency nurses work currently. There is I believe a central NHS staff bank already (NHS professionals) but I'm sure additional pay + expenses would encourage more people to join this. Staff were redeployed during covid and I think all NHS nurse contracts include a clause they can be sent to work in other services depending on need.

The economy wasn't in LD for 2 years, maybe 4 or 5 months at most, over those 24months and even then, large parts functioned fully.

With inflation at 11%, a 5% pay rise is actually a 6% pay cut.

Regardless, the nurses are voting with their feet, think about that if your involved in a hi speed accident in your BMW 5 Series, the Ambulance takes 3 hours to get to you and your treated in an Ambulance outside AE for 14hrs and then get put in a corridor for 3 days - Your dismissive attitude to the NHS might change, doubtful though.

Entry for OT, Physio's and Radiographers is higher again than for nursing.
The NHS is losing all of these too, even the DWP will pay a HCP £37k to be a PiP accessor, no shifts either and DWP sites don't charge for parking either.

@Putonyourshoes
"You’re absolutely right.
42% of nurses are a band 5. They cannot earn more than 32k. "

That's not strictly true - how many of that 42% of nurses on band 5 don't do any shifts or weekends? With shift allowances they definitely earn more than their basic salary of £32,934. Then there's High Cost Area allowance, and sometimes paid overtime too. How many nurses are only earning the basic salary?

I’ve never in my career known a nurse to get paid overtime.
”Shift allowances” are enhancements paid for night and weekend work only, not for shifts. We’re paid more for working weekends and nights, yes, and rightly so. You shouldn’t have to work nights and weekends to get a salary you are deserving of though.

Maybe they think it might come from the same pot that funded billions of pounds of useless PPE that expired before it was used. The PPE company whose founder was one of Boris's chums. Not to mention Matt Hancock's chum and local landlord who made billions from his useless lateral flow kits. Funny how public money can be drummed up when it's being given to tory beneficiaries.

@Putonyourshoes
"They cannot earn more than 32k"
"We’re paid more for working weekends and nights, yes, and rightly so"

So they/you can earn more than £32k then. Yes, rightly so, but your original statement is not only incorrect, it's also deliberately rounding the salary down by almost £1000.

Ok, I take your point that the first sentence in isolation is incorrect. Yes we can earn more with enhancements for working nights or weekends. But, I am allowed to make requests for 4 shifts a month, none of which I am guaranteed to get. So most months, the rota is published and I’ll be working week days all month and taking home only the basic salary, through no fault of my own.

I didn’t deliberately round down. But now I think about, I think that’s actually fair that I did, considering the £480 a year I pay in parking and £120 in registration fees.

So if we assume the average nurse earns £35k a year with weekend and night working, a 5% rise would take that to almost £37k.

That is a perfectly fair salary, and far more than the vast majority of the population will ever earn.

@FriedDuck

The vast majority of the population aren't nurses

Is it more than you earn? If not why do you think you deserve more than nurses?