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.

Of all the people on the planet I wish we overpaid, it is nurses. Good luck to them.

YANBU - but we should indeed all strike for a fair pay rise. Those working in the public sector, but not in NHS / police force have seen their salaries fall 25% compared to inflation over the last 10 years. They should get a fair, above inflation pay rise too. These people keep the country running, don't get paid more than nurses, but at the same time a strike would not be as visible / high impact as a nurses' strike, so maybe that's why they're less prone to striking than others.

Everyone should be treated the same... Perhaps rewind 12 years and run the economy adequately rather than prioritising enriching the top 1% with £2.5tn+ and cutting the incomes of the majority by 30-40%. The result of economic competence might be economic growth rather than the worst growth and highest inflation of comparable economies when someone doesn't pick some magical period like 11am on St Crispin's Day to 12.30pm on All Saint's Day, JRM.

Though the Bible of the Conservative and Unionist Party, the Daily Mail said after Liz and Kwasi's fiscal statement, bonanza, well until they saw the results in asset prices so perhaps a reputation for economic competence might be seen to be illusory?

Yet another person misunderstanding what some professionals actually earn. Criminal barristers were striking because their pay was pitiful. The information to back that up is freely available online.

Feels like a thread started by the Tufton Street mob to harvest for vox-pop attack lines.

Am still surprised the PM got an easy ride for making (and concealing) a firm commitment to act in the interests of a foreign power and relocate there while occupying one of the great office's of state until he 'handed back' his green card.

Same! ✊

If benefits don't get an uplift linked to inflation then | wonder how long until some ambitious junior MP tries performatively living on basic UC for a week to show it's easy without realising the grinding nature and the fear of a washing machine or cooker breaking, school uniform...

Oh f**k off OP. If anyone deserves a pay rise it's nurses! They should be overpaid. They don't get paid anywhere near enough.

I qualified at 21and it took me 12 years to get to Band 7. I did a post registration specialist qualification in critical care, a teaching qualification and additional specialist training at masters level. I would routinely be in charge of 16 critical care beds in a large teaching hospital. I did a different job, at the same pay, using those specialist skills after I left critical care but had no managerial responsibilities and thought I was paid fairly for that work.

Newly qualified nurses do not earn 43k.

The average salary will be pushed up by those registered nurses who are at management level, who are paid vastly about a band 5 salary. However the majority of nurses are band 5 staff nurses and the top end of their salary is just under 33k.

Well said!

No, people do voluntary work to 'help'. People go into nursing to work in a profession that they've trained for, in a job they (used to) enjoy, to earn enough money to support their household. Assuming NHS nursing, people also go into it as the pension and sick/annual leave have been historically good. Stop with the passive aggressive comments, trying to make people feel bad for choosing a job for any reason other than sheer altruism. Fs

The public sector can’t afford to keep accepting below inflation pay rises because they’re already 15-20% below where they were a decade ago. If they don’t start demanding better pay were will it end?

OP you seem woefully ignorant of the state of the country under 12 years of tory shafting

Average nurses do not earn £35k... this 'average' has been calculated with a lot of band 8 managers that are qualified nurses but do not work clinically and a few very specialist nurse consultants for example. Not your run of the mill band 5 nurses (not meant in a bad way, I am one of them).

The media is feeding all sorts of bullshit to the general public. Nurses are striking as an absolute last resort, we are a degree only profession and have an extreme amount of responsibility but the pay considering the conditions we are working within is disgusting. We do not get paid for our breaks but rarely ever get a proper break as patients would suffer. Our workforce is broken and the strike is to and protect the service for our patients and ultimately improve patient safety.

Hospitals are on their knees and if nurses continue to leave in their droves where they could earn the same in a much lower stress role then patient care is going to continue to get worse and worse and then what are the general public going to do?!

Haven't they historically lasted a day or so and had to cede they were wrong as we pay all their expenses on top of their wages and so they couldn't cope with UC or dole as was for a lunchtime, let alone a week.

@IWishICouldDance please educate yourself. The barristers pay rise relates to criminal barristers doing legal aid work. Many of the junior barristers doing that work were not even earning minimum wage. The barristers who earn lots of money set their own rates and are absolutely not funded by the tax payer.

Wh ydont you give up your job and go be a nurse then. Jesus. They have had pay suppressed for years. 17% will probably oynpjt them back to where they should be years ago.

I dont begrudge them asking for that. If the vefagd salary is only £33k ish wtf that's so low. I know I wouldnt do the job for that money.

Let's hope if anyone sahres the thread with their 'friends, they share the entire thread to show how much 'hearts and minds' have been won with such a thought-provoking post.

Time to talk about gold-plated pensions and then NHS waste...

In September, Tory donors and hedge funds deliberately shorted the pound and made themselves millions.
That is disgusting, contemptible greed.

A payrise for the nurses? That's long overdue and well deserved.

I resigned from the RCN in the early 1980s because they refused to even consider strike action - so it's been a long time coming in my opinion.

It's worth remembering nurses are also members of other unions which have striked in the past.

@NCFT0922 nurses of course go into the profession to help people but when we have accrued a load of student debt to be paid below inflation for years upon years so we can afford less and less with our wages it is soul destroying. This is our job and livelihood and we deserve to be paid fairly for what we do. This goes for everyone in the public sector. We are not trying to get rich, just trying to get many of our colleagues away from needing food banks.

@chaosmaker you're right though I don't recall if Parris lasted the week. I'd still find it contemptible if they lasted the week as there's a world of difference between knowing it will end and someone on UC living in fear of something breaking and of an unexpected bill (as indeed many not on UC do increasingly now too) and seeing their children miss out.

I try and note when the government try and paint UC recipients as unemployed/lazy/scroungers even though half? are in work on low paid jobs and the UC in effect subsidises corporate profits.

Nurses do loads of unpaid time, on top of that they are not paid enough.

Their job is hard enough without having to be worrying about paying their bills. If they need to strike to get a tidy pay rise, then I am all for it.