What will happen if nurses and other professions don't get their pay rise?

[malificent7]

The country has come to enough of a standstill as it is. I fully support them btw....do they keep striking?

You're so correct. If carers were to strike it would be catastrophic and there's a strong relationship between how they are treated and the issues facing nursing at present.
I think it's really regrettable that nurses feel they have to strike. The percentage asked for is never going to be given as it would set such a precedent in the public sector.

Worse is potentially yet to come - the usually mild mannered educational psychologists have just rejected their pay rise (of average 3%), sounds incredible to believe but they may end up striking too.

It's happening.

Every shift I work, there are agency staff working alongside. Which I absolutely cannot blame them for. I've been qualified around a decade and my pay is capped at £16.88 per hour. Agency make usually at least £25-50 per hour, so why would nurses not do this? There is absolutely no incentive to work for the NHS.

Worse than the crap pay, I've seen patients DIE or nearly die as a direct result of short staffing. You can't get to these people quickly enough to help them or they wait far too long for treatment and so they become much more ill and impossible to manage. Thats the worst part of it for me. A good example of this was when I was caring for a patient who's appendix had already ruptured and there was no capacity to take her to theatre so she just had to wait until the morning. This is outrageously dangerous!

So before people think we are asking for too much, we are asking for it to retain the staff to make it safe for YOU. Because at the end of the day, YOU could die because there's nobody to look after you.

My notice is in and I'm away to work in a nursing home with better pay, set shifts, cooked meals and NMC paid for. I can't cope with crying after every shift knowing I've done my best and it's still an absolutely diabolical standard of care within the hospital.

@AnIdiotSandwich I'm so sorry for your experience.
I think we are watching the NHS crumble in front of us after years of cuts and stagnant pay from the Tory Government. Yet the public blame the nurses for striking when they are broken with experiences like yours.
Some members of the public don't get this link, the NHS has been on its knees for years.

I've been a Nurse for 20 years.
My daughter was thinking of switching from teacher training to nursing and I told her this wasn't a good idea. Not sure if teaching is any better but I think nursing today would break her.

I had a 2nd year nursing student on placement with me this year who was amazing and would of made a brilliant nurse. She qualifies next year and has applied to do a post grad teaching qualification immediately after. She says her experience as a student nurse on the wards has been horrific. She has been a student through the pandemic and now cost of living crisis and knows she doesn't want this.

@ohsotired2022 I'm not a teacher but I think they are better supported and management in teaching surely is less pressured. Nobody is hounding you for beds as such, children's parents may well complain but it won't be on the same scale as the nursing staff deal with. Glad you advised her to stick with teaching!

They pay it back, more than pay it back, in work. In essential work that is far too important to be left to the corruptible private sector, in essential work that matters to life of both individuals and a state.

For what little it’s worth, yours is the neoliberalist crap we have been peddled and sold for the last 30- 40 years. It is demonstrably false. Before it got going there was a larger public sector than now. The economy ran on credit, not debt, and not on allowing the well off to extract wealth from all workers to enable luxuries beyond belief to a newly- created inheriting class. China was still making an even larger public sector work until even more recently. Public sector services recycle money around an economic loop. It was a very deliberate choice to allow private individuals to extract wealth from the public purse to set themselves up with assets.

That it has been the narrative of choice for so long is a major problem - like social media, it’s been going for longer than some of you on here have been alive and so you can imagine no other way. But it existed here in Britain once, and it fed and housed the majority of the population much more successfully.

I am part time permanent and do bank shifts solely because of childcare issues. I have to be honest perhaps this is my personality but I would never take on agency full time and leave NHS, I don't want to be moved around constantly and it's hard work sometimes working with new personalities constantly.

I agree with you though the agency money is better and people need to stop their GOOD WILL because we all have increased bills. I would not be doing overtime in poor working conditions when I could bank as extra else where for a lot more money. Nurses need to wise up... other industries have!

@Greensky90 I know what you mean about not doing agency. It obviously has it's downsides. But I can't blame the people who do it, it's the money we should really be paid.

It's just an awful state of affairs really.

Stomachs in knots thinking of going into work tonight

@AnIdiotSandwich yes your right, some people would love it.

I think you are getting a little confused as to the role of a nurse 🙄

They’d actually save themselves so much in agency fees. Plus, when they take on temps
constantly, experienced members of staff are taken away from their work to train them up which is a hidden cost. Amanda Pritchard, head of NHS England, earns circa £250k PA which I think is disgraceful. Also, the % annual increase sounds good but really, they should have a pot of money and people on lower bands should get more of it.

They used to be and are still ok. I’m a band 6 and pay in 9.8% of my salary. The NHS pays in something like 20% (or makes it up to 20%) you can easily look it up online. When we changed from the 2008 version of the pension to the 2015, it got worse. I used to pay in less 🤷‍♀️ I get good annual leave though. 33 days plus 8 bank holidays.

"Not a nurse, so just guessing here, but if they are not getting paid during strikes and it carries on with no action on pay, then they will just leave probably. So things would still be shit unless they get a payrise. The NHS will probably just pay them more as an agency worker, which is probably what will happen. An indirect pay rise, but without the stability and continuity of care of having them in the NHS on a permanent contract.
Great. Look forward to that."

This,

Yeah - if the Tories and all their corrupt bastard mates stopped pissing our hard earned taxes up the fricking wall we would certainly be able to afford to pay public sector workers properly.

Michelle Mone is an absolute fucking joke, and have a read about her delightful husband en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Barrowman who has siphoned off around £45 million to off shore funds for PPE.... he's got 6 homes, a super yacht and a private jet - plus a load of clever lawyers and accountants to make sure he stays rich.

Right, I'm a striking public sector worker, though not a nurse, and if I got my pay rise, I would actually benefit the private sector. I'd replace my shoes that are falling apart, fix the almost broken window, turn my heating on a bit more, maybe take my kids to a show and go on holiday. Nurses are living off foodbanks in cold houses, they have said so. You put more money in the hands of public sector workers you will be better public service from them and they will go and spend that money in the private sector generating revenue and enabling the private sector for ask for their pay rises too. You will retain people and increase the circulation of wealth. OR you can keep falling for the lie that public sector workers are robbing you by wanting a decent standard of pay and you can continue to vote for a tory government that won't do anything for you but will make the billionaires (Like Mrs Sunak) richer. The public sector pay raises would ultimate benefit everyone. Happier, spending more, retained NHS and pubvlic sector workers and more liquidity in the economy. Makes sense to me

my issue with this strike is that the nhs always get bigger pay rises than the rest of the public sector and I think it needs to be equal. They got a payrise last year when all other public sector for a freeze.
also, it’s not just nurses. The pay rise would be for anyone on agenda for change. So all the non clinical staff too

The contribution rates mean nothing in a defined benefit pension.

The NHS pension is very, very good indeed.

personally as nurses we are better off. The general public will suffer, however they chose tories. Agency pay is good. When privatised nurses will earn great money and likely free private health care. Staff will be funded at the front door by the public. Tories will take it in but you need to be connected to get a chunk of the serious cash like PPE , private test kits. Tories made millions

I don't think anyone would dispute that nurses and paramedics should be paid more but where will the money come from? Government borrowing, from funds that should go to patients? More and more people would want pay rises and as they are settled interest rates will go up, mortgages would go up and cost would go up getting us all into a dreadful inflationary spiral. I actually think that the government are trying to sit all these strikes out as they can see inflation going down thus reducing the possible wage increases.

Nurses will continue to leave the profession/country and we will find it very difficult to replace them. As is happening now.🤷‍♀️

But if all the bankers we attract do a First Aid course, that should help.🙄

If they aren't going to work I want a tax rebate. I 100% support their right to strike, and nurses i do not blame, but the government needs to stop taking money for nothing. For a health service that is often fucking deadly, it has collapsed.

They'll all eventually leave, and those that remain will resent it. Everyone loses

I haven't been on strike as on mat leave but even if I wasn't I couldn't afford to do more than one days strike. That is the case for most nursing staff.
I won't be able to leave the profession, I love my job despite the poor pay, exhausting shift pattern and 12 hour shifts.
I have just moved departments to my dream job (NICU) and can't see myself doing anything else and I'm no good at anything else anyway