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.

Alexandra2001
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

I am only disputing food bank use on £27k - I don't think that point is irrelevant at all.

Alexandra2001

How many times has your dd used a food bank? Has she managed to save anything towards her trip to Australia?

IDK.. but I wouldn’t want nurse’s job yet I’m very grateful for their existence! In my opinion they are worth their weight in gold. It’s all about negotiating in the end… plus, there’re already staff shortages… imagine if the salary is not competitive? Who’s going to be going into nursing and where does it leave people who need treatment from NHS?

RedAppleGirl
27k is poor pay
I'm wondering if Clavinova is 99 yrs old and still thinks it's 1954

£27k is the minimum starting salary of course (£32,466 central London) for a newly qualified nurse.

@shivawn
Clavinova Where are you getting your info?
I don't know anything about Italy salaries but I'll take your figures with a pinch of salt.

The average salaries quite clearly came from the previous poster's link - I was replying to that poster.

We have had no or very small payrise last 10 years. Government counted on nurses not to strike because it's a " vocation " "angels " !!!!
We are professionals doing an important and stressful job Working longer hours short staffed doing the role of junior drs stressed beyond breaking point Well the worm has turned we will no longer roll over Time for a salary that reflects or hard work our professionalism and for the sake of out patients We need the wards to be staffed well. We need new nurses coming in and not nurses leaving We need time to offer our patients excellent care/time and not to be running about trying to just keep the ward/clinics going Going home knowing we tried our best but it wasn't good enough !!! But God we really try !!!!!!

£35K is not well paid mp`s are o £85k and most of them could not tie their own shoe laces

£35k IS well-paid and very few people even WANT to be an MP - the most thankless job in the UK - comparing the rarified wages of an MP to the standard salary of a nurse is absurd.

There's no Amazon factories round here and supermarket jobs are sought after so not sure where all the Nurses round here imagine they'll be working instead? The Social Care sector is finally upping their game above NMW so maybe they can work in that sector instead.

Seems every unionized workforce in the UK are preparing to strike. Well seeing as the Govt have no credible opposition in Labour the only thing left is the Unions I suppose. Although maybe that's a Marxist sledgehammer with no solution.

As a nurse I have an msc and a degree. I can prescribe, diagnose, and examine patients. I have worked as a nurse for 11 years. In this time pay has pretty much been frozen.
pension contributions are around £350 per month, nmc fees are around £120 per year, union fees for indemnity cover and legal protection are almost £300 per year.

An error or omission could be fatal, I have to make sure my decisions are always en point. I have sleepless nights when you question your decision making. I cry after some of the most difficult conversations with those who are terminally ill. I invest my mind, souls and heart in my job.

I work late most nights to make sure all of my patients get the care they need. I eat my lunch as I work at my desk. Straight away that’s 30 hours of unpaid work a month.

I pay a huge amount of my pay in student loans, tax and NI. As do many others.

If I earned min wage with my 3 children I would take home around about the same with all the top ups etc. In fact if I didn’t work it would probably close after rent and council tax support

I love my job and my patients, I love learning and improving the care I deliver to patients but less than £200 a month after all deductions is a struggle. I am not entitled to any top ups.

on paper the salary looks ok to many but it is far less than the emotional investment.

Again I love my job but I have worked really hard to qualify as a nurse and develop professionally, surely the pay should reflect that.

I don’t dispute other professions pay or judge others at all. We can only strike for ourselves although the effect would be knock on.

Please don’t put the guilt of the economy on us I worked right through and haven’t been responsible for any of outer governments decisions. Fair pay for everyone that recognises the level off responsibility and accountability.

That was supposed to read less than £2000 per month

Hear hear! Every word of this.

Workers have been screwed over for 20 years. Ever since the house prices quadrupled and wages did not. Since the need for lifelong learning was abandoned in favour of making us all pay through the nose. Since work demands started being passed down through hierarchies, so a nurse of the 1980s or 1990s would barely qualify as a competent care assistant now. And all Rishi Sunak can say is that decent pay reflecting the cost of living is unaffordable.

So life is unaffordable Rishi. Life in modern Britain is unaffordable for working people. What exactly does that utter worthless rich shit expect people to do? What solutions does he have? This country is utterly broken.

You also have to bear in mind the massive employer's pension contributions here.

www.ft.com/content/9d9b03d0-55ff-4e2a-8ec7-2caab0a89381

Employer contributions to the largest private sector DC pensions are only about 10 per cent of salary — and the legal “auto-enrolment” minimum is just 3 per cent — so the average public sector DB pension is over five times more valuable than private sector DC.

This means a public sector worker on a £30,000 annual salary, with a pension worth £15,000, earns total pay and pension of £45,000, but a private sector worker on the same £30,000 salary, with a pension worth just £3,000 earns total pay and pension of only £33,000.

It's somewhat disingenuous, or naive, for people to talk about nurses' salaries without considering the taxpayer pension contributions.

If you donate non-expired food to a food bank, I am a goose.

Actually that's not true across the board. In my trust you can do overtime and get paid at a lower band.

My sister is a band7 nurse. She brings home over £41,000 a year. I don’t agree with nurses striking for 17% pay rise. I also cannot understand how nurses are eligible for food banks.

How can someone on £41,000 a year, plus having a husband/partner who earns similar, be eligible for food banks when OAPs on less than £20,000 a year, yet not entitled to pension credit, aren’t. It’s about time this government got its priorities in order.

Away to fuck with all your bollix.🙄
If things were cushty for nurses, they wouldn't be striking.🤷‍♀️ They wouldn't be leaving their jobs. Loads of people would be waiting and willing to take the many, many nursing vacancies in the NHS.

Why the fuck would anyone want to be a nurse? It's physically hard. It's mentally hard. It's expensive. The hours are long. When the shit hits the fan you're on the front line. And probably fucked. You are at greater risk of violence and infection.😖

On the bright side, our hospital trusts have a referral route to foodbanks for staff since before Covid, so that's something.😕

Lots of these threads are started by politicians aiming to influence and gauge opinion

That’s what I thought 😂😂😂😂😂

I know a few, my sister being one. She considers herself very well paid, she has extremely generous holiday allowance, works four days a week and has a gold plated pension lined up that I can only dream of. She thinks striking is a disgrace, she has no particular political views. But of course this is mumsnet and I would not expect many to say anything other than we should all go on strike.

YABVU. It's not a race to the bottom OP. And the requested pay rise is above inflation because of years and years of pay freezes. HTH.

Ok so your sister is on a band 7 most nurses aren’t. 41000 after all deductions is around £2200 pounds a month. Your sister has a husband earning simulator.
you can’t compare that to someone on 27000 who is single with children.

The gold plated pension is paid for 10% a year your sister will be paying £4100 pounds a year for. That’s over 155000 in contributions.

Most nurses past 2008 will work until they are 68 so depending how long they live got it may or may not be as gold plated as you think.

If there are any vacancies in your sisters not stressful job I’m sure quite a few would apply.

Again don’t compare nurses to pensioners that’s not the nurses fault. We won’t get any top ups etc as we have paid heavily for our pensions in both taxation and our contributions. Pensioners don’t have children to support and many won’t have an £800 rent or mortgage bill to pay a year. Yes they should get more but this is not on us!

Assume that was to me.

So I have no idea what band my sister is nor what she earns, I am commenting on what she has said, in that she considers herself well paid and she chuckles and boasts about her generous leave allowance and future pension.

I have not said a word about whether she finds her job stressful or otherwise, mainly because she hasn’t said so either way.

My sister is now married, she got married for the first time when she was in her forties. She had been a single mum since she was 24 and the father was unemployed when they were together and provided no support when they split when the child was a toddler. She has done it single handedly. And as I say she has never complained about her salary, on the contrary.

@Aprilx I believe the above post was to @BobbysGirly who clearly states her sister was in a band 7 role.

And your sister is now in her forties and was a single parent at 24 and never complained about the wages... that was nearly 20 years ago and then nurses were on a comparably good wage vs the cost of living. And many did not have to go to university then to get a nursing degree and accrue loads of debt. I am not slating your sister but just because she had it alright, does not mean nurses do now.

OK, OP you've convinced me. Let's fulfil Conservative Central Office's wildest sexual fantasy and rinse and repeat the last 12 years. Nurses and public workers have another c30-40% cut in incomes so that's now earning what, c 20-30% of what they earned in 2010. The richest 1% accrue a further £2.5tn in wealth. in 2034, there's massive inflation and food bank use and nurses and others don't eat, live in colder presumably rented houses and walk to work but are still 'lucky to have a job' as reminded by the next but 30 SoS for Health but guess what, OPs like you say of course the country can't afford a pay rise during thee latest difficult times engineered by a party still asserting a reputation for economic competence. Oh and strikes are bad and selfish and not what people with a vocation should do, they should just get on their knees and take it and say thank you. We've run out of poorer nations to steal HCPs from but it's OK because they're in a vocation and 'lucky to have a job'. The plan to further corporatise the NHS is progressed but as there's not enoough money or workers, it doesn't improve health but there's NEDs and consultancies and investibe shares and profits for the firms paying millions in lobbying so that's achieved its goals. Gongs and millions to reward all the incompetent and greedy behind the system that makes this happen. Well done, OP, you're right. Convinced everyone on the thread.