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 nurses 100%, and think they deserve - of all people - 17%. I think they probably won't get it, but if they had asked for 5% they would have got nothing. Management can solve this quickly by getting around the negotiating table sharpish and joining the real world. This "I only got 2% so no-one should get any more than that" I hear frequently is the economics of a 10 year old child

@Rippled you have no idea what a band 7 nurse does. They are highly specialised/and or ward managers, for example. They work as team leader in intensive care, they work with matching organ donors and those who receive transplants, they manage teams of around 50 people in 24h/365 days a year in services. I could go on. Why aren’t you protesting what bankers make?

honestly, people talk out of their arses, you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Bloody well good for them. About time

It is not fair that public sector pay has not kept up with inflation. A newly qualified lawyer earns £100k in London - are they worth more than 3 nurses of the same age?

I'm a nurse, I'd love to know where you are getting your figures from.

Thank you for the support from other posters, I will be joining in strike action. I'm also a nurse who has used my local food bank in the last month.

A newly qualified lawyer earns £100k in London -

Tbf that's only for a handful of law firms

Maybe if the govt stopped their stupid HS2 fuck up, there'd be more money to fund public service sector pay.
George Osborne should be in prison.

Therefore the outcome is that people will not receive the proper level of care we are all paying taxes for.

I personally don't feel I receive the proper level of care anyway, along with a lot of others. Was told I would need to wait over a year for a colonoscopy and then was told it would just only be a chat with the consultant first. Thankfully, I had the money so I decided to go private and luckily all was okay. Imagine if it wasn't though, and I had no option to wait. This is what thousands are dealing with right now.

Don't get me wrong, nurses do a fantastic job under very challenges circumstances. I just hate how people praise the NHS like it's some kind of holy grail. It's not. It's beyond a bloody mess.

Lol

It comes from the royal college of nurses ….. you lovely person

I would like more respect for the profession because that's what it is !! What is more annoying is the never ending increasing responsibility.
Being told to do prescribing courses , assess and treat which was done by medical staff is now expected from nurses . The public seem to think it's a vocation not a profession. Conditions are eroding every year we have more complex patients with multiple conditions to manage and increasing patient ratios.
The public seem to think nurses just do bed baths and are doctors handmaidens.

Nurses have effectively taken a pay cut for so much more responsibility and expectations.

I just hate how people praise the NHS like it's some kind of holy grail. It's not. It's beyond a bloody mess.

The reason it's a bloody mess is because it is underfunded and appallingly badly managed. More tiers of management than are needed and not enough staff at ground level.

Isn't it funny there's always an OP that goes right for the jugular with the average salary stat.

Given the wide range in wages across the UK and specifically the size and number of bands in the NHS I'd be discarding any "average xxx" statistic. People fell into this trap with all the "rich" train drivers ffs.

This comes from unsociable hour payments and extra shift if true. Not from 37.5 hours a week

Its still an average so includes all the higher paid management bands. its not what the actual majority of nurses who are band 5 actually earn. their pay band is 27k to 33k (after 5 years of experience. Then they are stuck at that. unless they manage to specialise or get a management post. They don't automatically continue rising through the pay bands. So ward nurses could have 35+ years and never get higher than a band 5

Brexit messages were ‘send home the foreigners who will work for less, so that we can be paid what we are worth’

• so what is the problem? nurses ( and other occupations) are demanding a decent wage….this is what ‘we’ wanted.

I believe the government have stopped funding for certain NHS professions too if I'm not mistaken.

@Monkey2001 do you know how much a lawyer earns at a local authority in London? That’s a much better comparison. Senior local authority lawyers earn around £45-50k in London. Also, only the top city firms pay £100k for a NQ. Many lawyers in London earn a lot less than that.

How much would they get in the private sector?

I have no idea. But the increase should based on market rates, not an arbitrary percentage from last year, especially if the pay last year was too low.

Tbf @reesewithoutaspoon I'm a band 5 ICU nurse with 32 years experience, 22 on ICU, and I do all those things apart from sickness reviews.
What I have noticed is that relatively junior nurses on the wards with 18 months experience are getting band 6 posts unlike ICU.

They deserve it more than almost anyone else I can think of.

I’m not sure it’s reasonable for all these replies to be pro pay rise when mumsnet was very anti NI contribution rise. Where do you all think the money should come from?

Team lead on ICU should be a minimum of band 6. Your employer is taking the piss

"You lovely person" 🤣 More lovely than the perosn who is spouting incorrect 'facts' out her arse yet being rude and snooty to another poster, telling them that they're wrong when it's in fact you that's wrong..

What exactly is "the average nurse" that you are going on about? Do you mean the average salary for a nurse? The average being propped up by management level nurses? And having nothing to do with the salary of the majority of nurses who are band 5 staff nurses? Please get an understanding of averages before spouting shite.

As I said, as you asked someone else for "data"; the "data" ie the actual exact salary for each NHS band in the NHS is to be found on agenda for change. Once you have the correct information, then perhaps you can participate in the discussion with meaningful input.

Think nurse training needs to be looked. Student nurses offered a wage while they train. I was lucky to retire in 2020 with a great pension after 36 years in the NHS.