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 with the nurses.

And the teachers.

And the teaching assistants.

And the health care workers.

Continued......revamp from top to bottom....weed out the crap nurses and doctors(there are lots) even if you don't want to believe it.....restructure the IT ....give a pay increase.....and investment in the right way.....✊

I have a chronic health condition and need to see nurses at least 3 times a week. I totally support the nurses strike even though it may inconvenience me. Nurses have been underpaid for years, they do a fantastic job, I could not have received better care. I hope they get what they are asking for, it is fully deserved, and it is scandalous that they have been treated so badly for so long.

Nobody works as hard as nurses for such shit money. They deserve double what they earn let alone a £6k pay rise.

✊🏻

YABU

Not a nurse but an allied health professional, have been for 12 years, and my pay hasn't reached £35,000

People [primarily women] in the care sector are often expected to put up and shut up about unfair pay and overwork. Don't let the media feed you a narrative that those on strike are being greedy, they're often striking because they care about the work they do and want to be fairly compensated for it.

Often on Mumsnet you get government employees trying to influence public opinion. I wonder if that is the case with this thread…

There is a massive shortage of nurses, they have been underpaid for a long time. Their jobs are v high stress. It is a critical profession. Yabu.

43k is a senior charge nurse. It is not a lot of money for the training, experience and responsibility involved.

YABU

I am also with the nurses 💪

I would say the consensus is generally YABU OP.

Spot on OP, they should kneel down and swallow the 30-40% pay cut over the last 12 years with more to come. The country made clear its priorities, free claps during COVID then the red top press turned on them last year when pay rises were rightly unaffordable.

Garages should accept claps for fuel so nurses can afford to do home visits and drive to work. As the last SoS said, they should just leave if they don't like nurses' pay and we'll recruit from abroad. Doesn't explain why there are already 50,000 vacancies if it's easy to recruit from abroad but ignore lefty critics saying things like that.

Let's face it, it hasn't been the right time for pay rises over the last 12 years and it's not looking good for the next few so they should just lump it. Florence Nightingale wouldn't approve of strikes would she, she'd get off her sick bed and complain.

Some jobs have a 'pay peanuts and get monkeys' nature like MPs and bankers/financial services workers. Others are a vocation. Or duty. Or public service and nurses, doctors, firefighters, police, teachers, social workers and all the rests should just wait for the wealth to trickle down like warm rain down their necks during a shower.

We can't recruit nurses, or GPs, in our practice and the next practice has handed back its contract and the next one is in the process of doing the same. I keep telling them, there's more to a vocation than money. What are their priorities? Patients and the public good or mundane food, mortgages, fuel, energy....

Oh why don't you just go and clap on your doorstep.

I would not advise my children to go into nursing. No bursary for a degree yet treated like staff on the final year of placement-ie the students are paying to work. Compared to other graduate jobs, the stress level is extremely high for lower pay. My daughter is 23 yet earns as much as me, a top of range band 6 and far less physical and mental load. But sure, be disgusted nurses have voted to strike.

You poor, naive, uneducated and illinformed simpleton. Go do some research, educate yourself, and pray you never get ill. It’s not worth explaining to you how wrong you are in almost every sentence of your post.

Often on Mumsnet you get government employees trying to influence public opinion. I wonder if that is the case with this thread…
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Absolutely. I said this a couple of years ago, not about nurses obviously but something else that controversial at the time.
It had spin written all over it!

Nurses deserve a decent pay rate.

They do far better work than Tory MP’s and Ministers.
Rishi- ( OP? ) You really do need to stop posting on MN!

I'm a cop and got a measly 5% had hardly anything for 10 years. Would never begrudge a nurse for more. It isnt a race to the bottom. Nurses are skilled educated work unsociable hours deal with agressive patients. You cannot compare a nurse to other public workers. Some public sector works work mon to fri 9-5 with xmas and bh off which nurses dont have. Goodwill has ran out and I dont blame them. There are ways to get money but the gov choose who to give it too. Presumably you moaned about the mps getting on average 11% payrise every year too? Or do toy just save that got NHS staff.

Well it's either Christmas Day level services for the duration of the strike OR in the not so distant future, Christmas Day level services for anyone who cannot afford to go private.

Recruitment and retention is awful, services are becoming dangerous. There is a reason R&R is poor, poor pay conditions leading directly to attractiveness of the job (less recruitment) and indirectly, less staff equaling more strain (less retention).

It's very simple. If you can't recruit and retain enough workers you either have to pay them more or improve their working conditions or both.
Given that there is a shortage of nurses and doctors then yes we do need to pay them more. And recruit and train more.

So nurses striking I have some sympathy with. Train drivers - no.

@justonemire - you're basically saying that nurses should know their place in the pecking order and shouldn't look for even remotely what they should genuinely be paid for their back-breaking, heart-breaking work?

Have you even the slightest indication as to what it is that a nurse has to put up with from the second they start a shift on the wards?

The reason there is a serious shortage of nurses is because they have been underpaid and undervalued for WAY too long. I guarantee that if a politician had to do even a fraction of what a nurse has to, they would give them their due salary and the nursing profession wouldn't be short of staff for too long!

Nurses do a great job? A great job? Saving lives, dealing with trauma and despair for hours, dealing constantly with death...yea they do a great job, ridiculous attitude to have, strike all you like nurses, without you and so many others in similar roles I'd be dead. Fair pay, pay rise all the way. Strike all you like

Where does it end Teachers, council workers, bin men - where is this rise going to come from - everyone is facing price rises and a cut in pay in real terms.

everyone must be treated the same