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’m a neonatal nurse, band 5, I’m on 32k. No amount of money would be enough for having to go through palliative care with tiny premature babies. What would help is if I didn’t have to deal with the worry of covering my bills at the same time.

I am a nurse and can confirm that 35,000 is not the average salary!

This OP is ridiculous. It's not 17% for this year, they haven't had a pay rise in absolutely years. It's completely unacceptable that they have been treated like this doing such a vital job. No wonder it's completely short staffed and they are so burned out.

So disappointing that people have this POV. I'm betting the OP hasn't had to use the health service recently, the treatment I got for my baby when we spent a week they was amazing. I'll never forget their faces.

That £35k average includes directors and assistant directors of nursing who are on six figure salaries.

I'm disgusted that nurses have been pushed into this position by the government and left with no recourse other than to threaten to strike. Disgraceful way to treat them but no surprise at all. Let's all clap for the selfless workers in the-NHS; until they want a pay rise when they become selfish enemies of the people.

@Putonyourshoes so is it less about being paid for the job you’re doing and more being paid to cover life costs? I would think most people on 32k can pay their bills unless they’ve overstretched.
You obviously knew the role of a neonatal nurse before you went into it so I’m assuming it’s just the rising living costs that are the issue?

17% sounds like a huge jump. However you have to take into account the absolute insulting pay rises they have had/not had for years.

I'm not a nurse, not public sector, but I do support them.

Perhaps look for your stats elsewhere and you’ll see that the pay freeze from 2010-2017 and the “pay rises” over the past few years have actually been losses in real terms.

Have you ever followed a nurse around to see what their day involves? I’d expect you probably wouldn’t be able to keep up with them as they rush from patient to patient mentally ticking off their to do list, knowing that they’ll likely be without a break and late leaving because they don’t want to let their patients down.

YABVVVVU

Behave. They deserve every penny of a 17% pay rise

Yes we will. The strike is about so much more than pay, it’s about the rights of our patients as well as the staff.

Because of this the trouble is that even a 17% rise wouldn’t solve the recruitment and retention problems in nursing.

A pay rise won’t sort out the horrendous management issues and workload, which is the reason most of them are leaving the profession.

Exactly! I’m on 32k at the top of band 5. The only way I can earn more is to apply for a band 6 job, where I’d be on 33k for two years having taken on the responsibility of being in charge of the whole ward. For £1k extra a year!

Our current PM is sitting on an absolutely obscene amount of wealth and so are his cronies. They've misled and outright lied with a solid agenda of squashing the little guy down and turning him against the other little guy. Yet you're worried that the people who are tirelessly keeping our most vulnerable alive and wiping their backsides are basically asking for a living wage.... you need to have a word with yourself!

Northern Ireland nurses did strike la couple of years ago, just so they could have the same shitty pay as the rest of the UK.

Bottom line is the NHS is hemorrhaging nurses, the job needs to be made more attractive to recruit and retain nurses. obviously, at the moment the job is not.
10 years of watching your pay fall in real terms will do that.

I never went into nursing for the money, and yes I knew what the job entailed before I went into it. That still doesn’t mean I should accept that nurses of today have taken a real terms pay cut.

Please come and spend a day with me keeping a patient alive in ICU and see if I deserve more than £15/hour!
The average nurse definitely does not earn 35k!!!

Sad that a senior LA lawyer earns £45k in London, if they are a good lawyer aged 40+, they should be paid more too. I know 25 year olds getting 2 or 3 times what nurses are paid, and it is not fair. Only the private sector has kept up with inflation and it is increasing the public v private divide.

YABVU. Nurses are striking for better conditions - ultimately not just for themselves but for all of us who use the NHS.

They should be given 50%.
Literally saving lives and paid less than a banker. Disgusting and I’m embarrassed for you OP.

As a student nurse it is really lovely to see the support on here.

I know, and the government will keep neglecting the NHS until it’s all privatised 😔

Yabu

It would be great if everyone could have a pay rise, but unfortunately, it's not possible. I see a lot of strikes/threat of strikes at the moment and it makes no sense to me. It doesn't take a genius to work out if everyone has a pay rise, it means nothing. The reason it means nothing is because the price of everything shoots up and we are all back in square one.

As for nurses, or the NHS in general, yes they do work long hours and have stressful jobs but I've yet to have a positive experience with any nurse in the NHS. A childless cousin of mine recently said she feared getting older as the degree of 'care' from NHS nurses depends entirely on how many family members are at their bedside and I think that's very true. Maybe it does come down to stress levels but the level of general and gross incompetence by NHS staff is pretty high across the country. I'm not sure I can agree a 17% pay rise is reasonable, sadly