Nurses’ pay compared with other jobs

[Pinkapron]

Would anyone be prepared to share what they pay tradespeople in their homes, eg cleaners, gardeners, plumbers, electricians etc, per hour please?
I am a staff nurse, 32 years qualified, with post graduate qualifications, and earn £16.84 per hour.

The NHS and Education ( to a certain extent) are wasting so much money on agency and supply staff.
Staff earn so much more if they're not contracted to local government directly.

Surely NHS/Education departments should be paying a decent salary in the first place?

I've heard school supply staff say that they'd never go back to a permanent school contract. Good pay and none of the after school shite.

I've heard nurses say that they love the hours that they've chosen to do .

You can see why there's a crisis in both those departments.

Pay cleaner £15 an hour

Sorry if this has already been said.

I completely understand everybody saying nurses need to factor in annual leave, pension, sickness etc.

But that also means nurses have to factor in paying an annual registration fee (£120), a union fee (approx £20 a month) and whatever absurd parking costs they need to pay!

I think the pension, annual leave and sick pay is worth a lot more than £30 per month (plus commuting fees that most people no mater what job needs to factor in).

I didn’t say it wasn’t, I just wanted to point out the costs nurses and similar professions have.

I didn’t include commuting, purely for the reason you suggest, that most people have some sort of commute to work.
But NHS parking costs are usually extremely high!

The vast majority of nursing posts are band 5. They will get to top of the pay scale in a few years and will then be stuck on about £33k for rest of their career.
To get to band 6 you need to be a clinical nurse specialist, band 7 is ward charge nurse level.. But the proportion of band 6 and 7 nursing posts in each hospital is tiny.

Nhs staff have to pay for parking but actually finding a parking space is like finding hens teeth.

Civil Service Administration officer £21,688. Never had a decent pay rise for years!

I would just like to point out to those who are surprised by people staying at top band 5 after a long career that there are very few band 6 or 7 or 8 roles and that it is almost impossible to advance up the ladder. Competition is extremely high and I’m going to say it… men ime go farther, faster.
20 years, vast experience, still band 5. People who have passed me on the ladder are staggered when they hear I am still a 5 and ask why. Because I didn’t get the 6 I interviewed for! It went to a man who does eff all!

It's also not helpful to compare years of experience IMO.

Experience only takes you so far for pay if fundamentally the job and responsibilities aren't altered.

So a nurse on Band 5 with 10 years exp shouldn't be paid less that someone with 30 years if they are both the same grade and have similar responsibilities

NHS pensions, job security sick pay and holiday also needs to be massively factored in

You do need to look at the overall package. DH was comparing his current role with a new job and he'd need a huge pay rise to compensate for his current employer pension contributions.

I pay my cleaner £16 but she has to drive from house to house and no employment benefits so it is not really comparable.

I think a more useful comparison might be what do other civil servants earn (to account for the job security and pension etc) and do they need degrees etc.

Nurses do get paid a lot more than that op. My friend told be he earned £60k as a Psychiatric nurse, danger money! My ex sil is a nurse practitioner and earns over £50k because she was complaining about the child benefit reduction

Also, the pension is not all that great!
I was looking at my statement on Friday and I have been paying in for 23 years. I currently pay in £287 per month (then add employers contributions). However, on my statement, for the past multiple years, less than £600 PER YEAR has been put into my pension.
I have a £14k lump sum and will get a pension of £8k per year on todays figures. That’s bugger all compared to what I and my employer are paying in!
we also used to get a £100 voucher for 20 years service in our trust. That has been changed to a badge. For 20 years of loyalty to one trust.

In the NHS if you are earning £60k then you haven’t given clinical care in a long time, that’s very top manager pay!

£50k is band 8 too, so not a staff nurse level.

I have friends on a band 6 in the NHS whose job it is to do social media posts and put stuff on the website.

Most nurses are a band 5

There must be an error somewhere if you've been paying that much plus employer conts but they aren't showing up.

Employers aren't allowed to take money for pensions and put it somewhere else.

You should contact your payroll and get them to look into it for you.

OP I'm 31. Been a qualified nurse since I was 20. I learned quickly that the government has never or will never care about us or pay us our worth. So I done what I needed to do for myself. Progressed quickly and got my first band 7 post by 26 years old. Im now a top band 7 and work only unsocial hours/most Sundays. I work only a 24hour contract in the NHS and get paid not too much less than 50k for the 24hours as they are all enhanced rates. Also have the skills and qualifications now to earn lucratively in the private sector and as I only work 24hours I have plenty time for private work. Don't wait for the government to see your worth, not going to happen. The opportunities are there for nurses now to progress in a whole host of ways and top up our money privately. I will never work more than 24 hours per week in the NHS ever again, completely thankless! You absolutely cannot sit in band 5 jobs though, working yourself into the ground. It's not sustainable, make use of the available opportunities is my advice!

Sorry but agree with this. Not saying that nurses should or shouldn’t be paid more but this isn’t a fair comparison.

I contacted the pensions people about it a couple of years ago because 3 years of pension were missing from my pot. I also queried how my contributions plus employers contributions only amounted to <£600pa and I was assured that that is correct. Apparently only 5% (or some such tiny figure) is put in to pension. I kept querying it and she kept saying the same thing so I had to say I just don’t understand your figures.

The £600 you're referring to - I assume thats the amount of the annuity?

The NHS pension is relatively simple. 1/54th of your pensionable salary is added to the annuity you will receive for each year in the scheme (plus some indexing over time).

So if you earn £32,400 (for example), your annuity will go up by £600 for each year you contribute to the scheme.

If you've got 32 years experience and post grad qualifications why have you not applied your skills and progressed onto a band 6/7? There's loads of pathways so I'm a bit confused about this and it's unusual I've came accross someone with this much experience who has never progressed, unless you are unwilling or uninterested to do so.

And it's not that only 5% is put in, I'm not sure where they would get that from.

That £600 annuity will be paid out every year after you retire until you die, and will be index linked to match inflation. So it's worth massively more than just £600.

Thanks for the explanation. I just came back to post similar as I googled and which has some guidance.
It’s pretty dire though and doesn’t give much hope. I have another 24 years to work and build up the pension and it still isn’t going to pay very much 😬

I work in the NHS in a corporate function, at least half of my team earn more than a qualified nurse, a few earn more than double. Obviously they all hold professional qualifications which take many years to achieve but it always feels wrong. I don't really know how you put a value on the salaries of nurses/care workers as to be honest I think the HCSW have an extremely tough job also, albeit few qualifications required, I work in Mental Health which is extremely challenging for all the clinical staff. No amount is enough for the trauma they are regularly going through at the moment.

I am not sure what the answer is really.

On a self employed basis, with which she has to set aside money for her tax and NI contributions, own pension, own sick pay, own holiday pay, etc.