To be disgusted that nurses may be striking for a 17% pay rise!

[justonemire]

Of course nurses should receive a fair salary and of course they have as much right as anyone else to ask for a pay rise. However to ask for a pay rise that is 5% above the current 12% inflation rate is just ridiculous and never going to be approved.

The average nurses salary is £35.600 and this would equate to a pay rise of £6.150.

Yes nurses do a great job but so do a lot of other key workers in the public sector who have only received 2%

The government simply cannot accept the nurses pay demands because if they do everyone else would go on strike for a similar deal. Where would it end.

Therefore the outcome is that people will not receive the proper level of care we are all paying taxes for. If there are strikes then The NHS will be run as if it is Christmas Day. God help us and our loved ones then.

There will be resulting misdiagnosis and deaths and where will the fault lie? Yes you can blame the government, Putin for invading Ukraine and pushing up food and energy costs, etc but I think we will also all blame the nursing profession too for asking for a completely unrealistic 17% pay rise.

😂

I support the nurse strikes.

I also think they should get way more than 17%

Not a nurse, just someone who can see their value.

Waiting for school support staff to strike. I’ll be there.I support the nurses.

Not top of all of the we have the annual NMC registration fee, we pay to be nurses!

Oh behave, an average nurses salary is not over £35,000 🤦‍♀️ Yes there are obviously higher earning nurses who will bring the average salary up, however the truth is, the vast majority of nurses work as band 5 staff nurses, those you see on wards, community clinics etc. The top end of their salary is £32,934. That is likely to be a nurse who has a degree, anywhere from newly qualified to over 30 years of experience, who takes part in regular continuing professional development, training and education. Many nurses these days have postgraduate qualifications, masters degrees etc. And have worked their arse off in the first place, for 3 years at university, 50% of this working on the wards on placement for free to get their qualification in the first place.

There is no way they will get 17%, nor are they expecting to. However starting off negotiations will always start off higher than what the person is expecting, as it will be negotiated down and some wiggle room is required. I predict anywhere between a 3-7% rise in salaries.

I support the nurses and am proud to.

@dreamingofsun a NQN would earn £27055 per year. I am at the top of band 5 (15 years qualified) and as I said I still do not earn £35k per year.

YANBU to be ‘disgusted’ with your Daily Fail views OP, hopefully that’s why ur hiding out

RedAppleGirl
Wow, the disparity is disgusting. The UK definitely underpays and undervalues its staff.

Then so do Ireland and Italy - the average salaries in your link are in US dollars and work out at less than £35,000.

1. Ireland - $39,768 (USD)
2. Italy – $30,179 (USD)

I support the strike, and the pay request. You should be more worried that there will no nurses left if they aren't given the increase.

They should have striked years ago instead of ‘putting the patients first’ - putting them first has ended up with this non functioning NHS. People dying through lack of treatment.

I am a band 5 staff nurse, I qualified in 1990 and have relevant post graduate qualifications. I earn £16.84 an hour. I find it very difficult to ever find any tradesperson to do a job in my house for anything like as low as that.
Would anyone care to share what they pay tradespeople? Decorators, electricians, plumbers, cleaners, gardeners? I think that might help people to put nurses’ poor pay into perspective.

I think we should be grateful they are striking because if I was asked to do what they do - not even the job content but the hours, the lack of breaks, the covering tasks completely outside their expertise because of vacancies, the verbal and physical abuse - for the money they get I'd have quit long ago.

Which a lot of nurses have done and a lot more will do if they aren't paid appropriately. There are barely enough people to run services safely (and that's putting it mildly). We increase pay or find a clever way to run the NHS without nurses.

Where do you get the figure of 35k for a nurses salary.
I am a nurse, worked in the NHS for 14 years and still no where near 35k!
Ward managers might be in that bracket but not band 5 nurses, who most are.

hear hear

I hope the nurses get their well deserved pay rise and it helps with the staffing issues

Liz truss is back

That made me laugh.

I absolutely support them.

I 100% support the nurses strike. Woefully underpaid.
Teachers, TAs, Carers ect should also strike.
Fuck this government.

Yeah YABU. TBH I'm more disgusted that you're disgusted OP.

@Pinkapron they’re not in anyway comparable though? Surely you’d be better comparing to social workers, paramedics, dental nurses…

Yes but this is on top of several years of 1%/2%/zero rises where most salaries have fallen hugely in real terms.

The block monetary rise should have been done years ago as it's much fairer than percentage rises . I would like to see this replicated in other areas .

@Pinkapron also, people can choose to go into a trade knowing they can earn very good money. Nobody goes into nursing expecting to be rich. They go into it to help, no?

nursiebernard - thanks for clarification. so as my previous post - starting salary is pretty competitive with other grad jobs but the pay grades dont seem to reflect experience - ie dont go up that much. I'm not just comparing with son.....but he recently started at 23k in totally different field, with masters and BSC.

On the contrary, we will be failing in our duty of care to patients if we don't strike. The NHS is on its knees, polite requests to government have been dismissed. To uphold our NMC code of safe practice we are left with no other option but to strike.
And the money is there, recall the £38Bn written off for Test and Trace. It's a matter of political will. Surely the health of our whole population is worth spending on ?