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.

everyone else would go on strike for a similar deal. Where would it end.

It ends with fair pay and a more equal society.

there is 2,000 vacancies in my Trust
healthcare staff are voting with their feet

I think the people who condone the attitude don’t work in the NHS, as always

Half my family are Australian, living costs are not double what they are here and my DD is leaving the NHS next to work over there.....
There is differences depending where you live but she got this job whilst still at Uni and 2 of her cohort are now there too.. so DD has a very good idea of living costs.

Statistically.... Australia is 8% more expensive that UK.

The average cost of living in Australia ($1947) is 8% more expensive than in the United Kingdom ($1804). Australia ranked 10th vs 16th for the United Kingdom in the list of the most expensive countries in the world

Not difficult to imagine..... 27k p.a minus pension is 1680 per month, take rent say 800, car parking = 100, student loan/nurse registration = 30, credit card payments, energy, water and council tax = 400, food and clothing... fuel costs...

All this assumes they are single with no children or pets or hobbies and wont be saving.... for a rainy day or a holiday and the car doesn't need repairs or consumables.

...and yes will need a car because of shift work and/or living rurally.

The tax doesn't make sense. The highest rate of taxation is 45% and he'd have to be making £150k a year to pay that. Second jobs are taxed any higher than firs/maint jobs it is just that he will have used his tax free sum £12,570 a year in his main job.

It definitely doesn't make sense to book him as bank rather than overtime.

I'd be surprised if hospitality was next as it's on its knees already - even the largest chains, let alone independents, are struggling so any increases will have to come at the expense of immediate price increases.

People won't be able to afford it and, as hospitality is as far from an essential service as you can get, there'll be mass closures and mass redundancies.

A friend works in a capital investment area in the hospitality industry (key infrastructure in pubs, restaurants, hotels, etc) and she's commented several times recently on how spending on upgraded equipment has fallen to lower rates than it did even in covid times - most are struggling to pay the energy bills to keep open.

They refuse to pay overtime in lots of places, it's not financial it's political.
Also they often only pay the bank on a band 5 mid rate, so if you are top band 5 or a 6 then it's actually a lower hourly rate than normal. that's why lots of nurses choose to join agencies

@Clavinova Do you really think £27k is enough to live on? If you currently earn less and have a good quality of life then please share your secret.

This is a disaster moment - the public sector have had enough. They know what the mooted settlement is.

2 per cent is obviously too low and the Government has set an incentive to strike. If they use agency workers to fill gaps then either services will decline and or it costs a fortune to the public purse immediately. Awful

Average nurses salary £36,500.

That’s a funny story.

Posts like these feel so inherently contradictory- “omg people would die without nurses!”- well yes, exactly, that’s why they should be paid appropriately! Either they’re important and we pay them accordingly, or they’re not and it doesn’t matter if they strike.

Also they often only pay the bank on a band 5 mid rate, so if you are top band 5 or a 6 then it's actually a lower hourly rate than normal. that's why lots of nurses choose to join agencies

This isn’t true - I work in HR for a staff bank and staff are paid the same rate as their substantive role , plus the WtD enhancement so they actually get more for bank shifts.

And agency staff will always be paid more - it’s the nature of the beast. (And yes if you knew the amount of money spent on agency staff it would make you weep with frustration)

Maybe in your trust. At ours bank is paid as band 5 regardless of band of substantive role.

Then you need to complain as that is in the agenda for change terms !

@SilverCatStripes but when retired nurses went back to work to help with covid - Nightingales and vaccine centres we were all put on the lowest band 5 - £12.90 per hour.

PinkPanther27
Do you really think £27k is enough to live on?

I don't expect people earning £27k to be queuing up at food banks no - certainly not.

Alexandra2001
Not difficult to imagine..... 27k pa minus pension is 1680 per month, take rent say 800, car parking = 100, student loan/nurse registration = 30, credit card payments, energy, water and council tax = 400, food and clothing... fuel costs...

Well, I'm not donating to food banks to fund someone's car, clothes and holiday spending. Overtime? Flat share?

I don't know if this displays but it sets the issue out well. Fingers crossed

That's shocking when you see it like that.

Come on @Clavinova ...... Do you really not see that having cloths is an essential? or a car to get to work in?
Hospitals tend to be out of town, our one has no public transport late at night.......
District nurses, midwife' should they buy a bike?

What if O/T not available/childcare/have your own house and now a f off great mortgage or LL has wacked rent up?
(my DD's have gone up £100 month, despite flat share)

Whether you think the 27k wage is enough or not is once again, irrelevant, nurses are leaving and now prepared to go on strike... so they have told you its not enough.

Yes, it's stark. You can see why nurses would leave for the private sector given price increases. Anyone would consider that if they wanted to maintain a reasonable quality of life.

Op still not back?

Not under that name, no.

How anyone could argue against us deserving a pay rise after seeing that is completely beyond me!

27k is poor pay.
Back in 2000 in was ok but now.
Pay has been static for nearly 2 decades.
I'm wondering if Clavinova is 99 yrs old and still thinks it's 1954.