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.

Lowest rents for a 1 bed flat in London are around £950. Leaving a nurse on £27k under £800 pm for everything else. It isn't a lavish lifestyle! And God knows they do enough free overtime. With 47,000 open nursing posts in the UK, isn't something being saved on the wage bills as ratios are stretched?

It's frustrating to be a public sector worker whose pay has been held down. We were told that it was all for the 'greater good' and 'we're all in it together' but the UK has never been in a worse situation. It feels as if it was all for nothing. And the ruling class still get by lining their own pockets. 'Sir' Gavin Williamson, sacked multiple times and forced to resign and still a LORD. It's jam tomorrow for everyone else. The current government are just disgusting.

"Lowest rents for a 1 bed flat in London are around £950. Leaving a nurse on £27k under £800 pm for everything else."

The post wasn't just about London though and there is a London supplement according to my google search.
I'm ready to accept it's not enough money, but to say that nobody can live on it is ridiculous when people live on a lot less and it's comparatively a good wage for a very young person.

Yet not all people that qualify as nurses are 22 year olds. I have friends who have gone into nursing in their late thirties/forties. Vocations don't always catch you fresh out of school.

The money is a small part of the overall virus that is tory policy on the NHS in general with their stealth privatisation. Oh and their stupid 'small state' (let everything be run by private companies that the taxpayer bails out continually) mentality rubbish.

@Gwenhwyfar 27k might be a good salary for a 22 year old, but is 32k a good salary for a 62 year old with 40 years experience? Because realistically that's what 90% of nurses are looking at (I pulled that stat out my arse and yes it's anecdotal). There's little incentive for promotion as you lose your shift allowance so often take home pay reduces with progression. It's all backwards.

Nurses pay has been eroded year on year for over 10 years. What people are failing to grasp is the current government didn't address it appropriately even in the 'good times' to enable their policy of the eradication of the nhs ie make the nhs so bad over time that people with money, will move to private health insurance of their own volition, thereby, as is the norm, the people who cant afford private health insurance will suffer tbe most.

So the choice is , support nurses and there might be some hope of salvaging the nhs because without better pay and conditions for nurses in the near future youll be paying through the nose for medications, treatments and appointments. We are nearly there, covid has made it nigh on impossible to see a gp, which is feeding into the hands of Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak who are reading out of the same hymn book in relation to privatising the nhs. If you think things are bad now it will only get worse.

Their pay demands seem perfectly reasonable, they have to live after all and it's a graduate profession which demands high skill levels and, these days, repayment of student loans as well. Gone the days when qualified nurses were almost all single females, angels living in nurses homes on shit pay as a vocation, or married and working part time for a little extra cash to help out with the bills. Try getting childcare for shift work and then commuting long distances as you can't afford to live near work, it's not helping them through 12 hour shifts, of course they need decent pay! No wonder there's a national shortage of qualified nurses the way their pay has fallen behind.

YABU nurses are underpaid and overworked and have been for years. No I am not a nurse, just very grateful for everything they do. I for one couldn’t clean up after someone or clean them up for that matter. Just one of the things they do.

Yes you are being unreasonable. I am a nurse and am reluctant to strike but I voted yes. That’s how bad it has got. Current situations is that it is so unsafe on a daily basis that patients safety is at critical levels daily.
Ironically on strike days there will be provisions to protect life and limb so it is likely to be safer to be a patient on those days.
This is about so much more than a pay rise. It’s about recognising the level of responsibility we take daily, making it an attractive career with a salary that reflects all of this and make it a career that people want to do and more importantly retain those people. We are haemorrhaging experienced staff and those can not be replaced by a newly qualified nurse. If the skill mix is not there then patients will suffer.
What has tipped the balance now is that daily staff levels across the whole of the NHS make it dangerous on a daily basis, strike action will not tip it into dangerous territory, it is already there.
As I said, the special provisions on strike days will most likely make it safer and better on those days than a normal day. I hope this helps to understand why we voted yes.
Agenda for change pay scales for a Band 5 registered nurse, which is the majority of nurses is in the pic below. Band 6 and 7 are sisters/ ward manager so not the majority of the general workforce.
On my last shift I had to try to fit 8 resus patients into 5 bays- with 3 nurses. Ideally I want 2 nurses per patient. These are cardiac arrest, anaphylaxis/ intubation patients etc. Life threatening stuff.
So yes, pay the nursing profession properly and attract staff but more importantly retain them.

There were good Tories back in the day even John Gummer who says we need to pay the nurses and confront the elephant in the room ..

twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1591172903369932804

They do strike. They went on strike in NI very recently because they were paid lower than the rest of the UK. And they will strike this time round .

Of course nurses will strike. And should!

doctors should do so then, juniors and consultants ( who have had equivalent of 35% pay cut in the last decade)

would be in favour of joint doctor and nurse strike but unfortunately I’m not in charge!

Didn't take people long to forget about the hard work and suffering that nurses and doctors went through during the pandemic!

Nurses have received derisory pay increases for years and their comparative pay is way below what it should be. £30k odd isn't a great amount for their work load.

Just to add… nurses have had a 20% equivalent pay cut, so my only question is why they are not asking for a 20% pay rise. Why ask for 17%? Should ask for the full 20%

You’re being extremely unreasonable and clearly very misinformed.

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.

with a multitude of successful strikes and population who have enough money to buy stuff and subsequently stimulate the economy?! Who knows

Yes they should get 17% and the teachers and the council workers and all the other public sector workers. They are all the GOOD people doing GOOD jobs. Never mind all those who work for the NASTY private sector who get LOADS of money, even if they're just in the call centre. NOT to mention the charity sector! Actually NOT to mention anyone except the GOOD public sector. Cut services, put up taxes, increase national debt for future generations to pay off. We don't care about any of that!! Give the public sector workers what they want because public sector workers are GOOD!!!

YABU
I have worked as a mental health nurse for 30 years. I am educated to degree standard.
I am employed 37.5 hrs per week. I don’t get paid for my breaks yet rarely get to take them.
I am rarely out on time - generally half an hour minimum over my time.
Our ward used to have 18 beds. Now we have patients lying on mattresses in day rooms.
Staffing levels are decreasing while patient numbers and acuity are increasing.
Stress levels are at their highest at staff are going off sick as we are so understaffed and over worked.
We are not looking for a huge wage .
None if us joined the profession hoping for that.
We want a fair wage that reflects the level of care we offer to our patients.
For us, the patients come first.
We deserve to be paid fairly to allow us to o ti ur to do what we love.
That is not unreasonable.

Firstly how do we pay for this? Second, we always about poor public sector workers below inflationary increases. I have worked in private sector for 20 years and have never had an above inflationary increase and have never complained about it.

@PUGMEISTER21 at the risk of repeating what has been said, it’s not a race to the bottom. Too bad you’re not in a union and we’re content to keep in your Lane and not complain. FWIW I work for a private company which is run pretty tightly, but we had a 10% increase since last month. So it’s not such a clear public-private divide.

More fool you. Why not complain?

All the nurses I know earn more than that.

In order for company's to give decent pay rises though they either have to make, more money, increase prices or save on costs. If this isn't balanced then people will be made redundant and then less tax goes back in the system. There are £1.5m people in the NHS and pay as always is by far the biggest cost so is a huge increase sustainable as it will need to come from tax which then then hits profits and the cycle above carries on. In 2008 many private companies cut pay, how many public sector workers had their pay cut? I am getting 4% this year which I am quite grateful for.

Surely the easy way to fix this is to stop the NHS paying agency staff. If they didn't use agency staff (which is an horrendous cost, and how many nurses leave to work for agencies - bonkers)

Keep the 'supply' work so to speak in house. Think of all the money the NHS would save.

And then they can pay everyone properly.

@PUGMEISTER21

You got 4%

No wonder you don't complain

I was taken ill today while on an arts workshop. Very hot, nauseous, passed out for a few moments. Felt terrible. An ambulance took me to A&E, I was taken straight in when we arrived to a designated bay. Given a variety of tests by various people, nurses, doctor, xray staff. Can't fault them. So kind and reassuring, hardworking, efficient.I wasn't a complicated case, but goodness knows what else they had to deal with today. So yes, they do deserve to be well paid. Our lives are in their hands.

And by the way, all the tests were fine. Home and feeling much better now. No-one could fathom out what caused it. Just one of those things.