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.

With all due respect, there are very few people who have the luxury of:-
employer pension contributions of 20.68%
33 days holiday plus 8 days bank holiday
overtime paid at 1.5x over 37.5 hours
overtime paid at 2x for bank holidays

Compare that to what many people get:-
employer pension contributions of 3%
20 days holiday plus 8 days bank holiday
no overtime pay - just expected to stay to get the job done

I'm sure you are an experienced and valued member of the team but if you're only at the top of Band 5 after 32 years you haven't progressed very far in terms of your career. In the same way, that if you hadn't been promoted very far above you're starting you wouldn't be earning loads more despite having loads of experience.

Blimey, that last sentence was gobbledegook!

Basically, you'd be in exactly the same boat in private sector if you were doing a job and had lots of experience but hadn't been formally promoted.

I’m a dog walker/pet sitter and earn between £20- £30 an hour. I don’t have a company pension scheme, paid sick days etc but similarly I haven’t studied to do this.

@Peekachoochoo most nurses will remain at a band 5 for the rest of their life. To go on to anything more than a band 6.... they probably would have to pay to retrain like the rest. I don't think you understand how nursing quite works. As for the unsociable hour pay are we suppose to be grateful? A day shift starts at 7am on a Sunday till 8pm!

There's draw backs to this line of work if you end up a single parent and you work these type of hours.

"I work in the NHS in a corporate function"

Is the NHS a "corporation"? Like a body corporate - a company? Like a business?

This is where the money and waste is going, on a huge bureaucracy. I'm sure you're all super skilled and super smart, but surely there is scope to simplify things a bit? No? Not at all? We couldn't do without one of you? There couldn't be one less Away Day or weekly Stress Yoga session for you stressed out "NHS corporate" folk? We should just keep tipping in billions? Oh, ok........

Support working with very challenging adults with disabilities. I dispense meds and give insulin and only paid £10.50 an hour. I should be on so much more specially when I get hit most days a work and my company won't pay us challenging behaviour pay which is £11.55 an hour

but if you're only at the top of Band 5 after 32 years you haven't progressed very far in terms of your career.

Do you have any idea what % of frontline nursing posts are higher than s band 5? A tiny percentage!
If a nurse wants to remain working on the wards and doesn't want to be a ward manger then you're talking about a band 5 post

DH is electrican, he has to pay for public liability insurance and employers insurance, van insurance, motor tax, fuel costs, pays a yearly fee to the governing body. Really you can't compare

Very untrue. This certainly isn't the case in my trust and specifically where I work in the community. They usually progress within a few years. Also have quite a few nurse friends who are late 20's/early 30's who work for a different trust and are now all at least a band 6, 2 are a band 7. The only reason I see someone staying at a band 5 for this huge length of time is unwillingness or as another poster suggested, probably not very good at their job.

I also can work 15 hour shifts and get called in on days off which I refuse to do. Sleep in rate is £30 for 10pm till 7am yes I may be sleeping but I could get woke up and lose sleep. Also a lot of training to

Also most trusts pay for the training on the job, I've never known any nurse to have to pay for their own training such as prescribing or clinic skills etc. so I'm baffled as to where you got this information from.

I'm an accountant, kind of necessary in the NHS

This comment shows you to be incredibly ignorant. Even an average sized district general hospital trust will employ 5000+ staff - these are huge organisations.

Who do you should propose should run payroll, recruitment, HR?
What about estates and building maintenance?
Finance, cashflow, capex planning?
IT, telecomms?
Procurement of meds and equipment?

Those are all corporate functions, and all 100% essential.

But there is no scope for greater efficiency? None?

If you honestly believe you are running at max efficiency, I would rather the NHS collapse then tip even more money into its big black hole of inefficiency and entitlement.

As it goes, I'd rather you reform, but you never will because you honestly believe that you are running that massive behemoth at max efficiency and with minimal bureaucracy. No way are you. No where near.

@Rippled agreed. I'm sick to death of hearing about it to be honest.

Thank you, I should have made the effort to post this myself really in response to that comment but I assumed someone who could be so nasty/ignorant was not worth responding properly to.

The corporate functions work extremely hard, I hate the awful reputation they have as its certainly not been my experience in the NHS trusts I have worked for over the last 25 years. We work many many hours over what we are paid for, worked solidly throughout lockdown with no bank hols or leave at all and mucked in with clinical services and then the vaccine centres over and above our jobs. Nothing different to many other jobs and obv the benefits are good don't get me wrong, but we do work hard nonetheless and for a lot less than in the private sector.

Sorry if I've offended anyone but there are absolutely loads of jobs out there where earning capacity is limited unless people upskill and move up into a specialist role or management. It doesn't matter how much experience you have.

This applies to private sector just as much as the NHS. In fact, having worked in both I'd say it's almost worse in private sector.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about clearly.

Move to the wards. Social care expected you to work with the same person for 14 hours a shift then sleep jn. Minimal training I didn't even have breakaway or MVA restraint training. I moved onto the wards and later did my nurse training. Even as a HCA you would be rotated hourly and the pay was more fair.

My (non-emergency) plumber charges £120 an hour plus callout fee…

But surely we don't want loads of nurses moving into management to earn more?
Should we not be recognising and rewarding the contribution of nurses who stay at the coal face providing direct patient care? Surely that is what the public would prefer?

I don't work for the NHS so not sure why you're asking me if I'm running at maximum efficiency. I used to, and it was bloody hard work.

You clearly know fuck all about the topic, and therefore fuck all about how efficient the NHS may or may not be.

The fact that your first thought was "stress yoga" workshops rather than the many, many essential corporate epartments in a hospital says a lot about your facility for critical thinking.

We do need good nurses moving into management also though, no one wants someone with no clinical experience running a clinical department. Many don't want to stop working on the front line though and end up going into management to earn more and they are not always good at it. They definitely need to be paid more IMO.

Is it really helpful to pitch one profession against others? The crazy inflation we are seeing at the moment is affecting people across many career paths. We should all be standing together, not picking and dividing. Totally support the nursing strike action as well as all others who can.