For all those who support the strikes

[chopc]

Where do you think the money will come from for all the pay rises? Are you personally willing to pay more tax?
We all saw during the pandemic it is the poorly paid essential workers that kept the country going and they totally deserve more money than the claps they got. However will YOU be prepared to contribute to the pot ?

If not where do you think the govn will find more money from?

Well I suppose that having ill staff caring for people will help to finish off the vulnerable much more quickly (whether through passing on viruses or through accidents that result from attempting surgery with your arm in a sling), which will save a fortune in ongoing care.

@PrincessConstance you may be on to something, while you're at it you could introduce a campaign promoting the benefits of smoking. Lots of tax revenue and a huge saving in pensions and social care. Everyone's a winner! Well apart from those who died...

What could possibly wrong with incentivising people to go to work on hospital wards while potentially infected with a contagious illness? Sounds like a great plan

Whether you support the strikes or hate unions etc but Sunaks intervention today calling the unions "Grinch's who are stealing Christmas" isn't going to help one bit.

Unions balloted the workers and the its the workers who are manning picket lines.

We need grownups to sort this out before it escalates, because the nurses can keep going, making up loss of pay by bank work.

Support the strikes topline but I have many questions and annoyances within that general support. I think it's right to questionwjefe the money will come from. And you only have to look on threads like this to see that those working in the public sector have some grey areas in terms of understanding what funds their wages.

One of the biggest pots of cash comes from income tax, the biggest proportion of income tax comes from the private sector, the amount of people employed by the private sector is nearly 5 time that of the public sector! The private sector is on it's arse wage stagnation, wage depression in many sectors and roles plus the amount of economically inactive - much of which is blamed on a nation in poor health, this means the pot from income tax used to fund public sector wages is dwindling. It's right to question then where this money will come from.

Just look @WiseUpJanetWeiss 's post who seems to think wage rises will support the poor old little private sector (much of which is B2b and couldn't be directly supported by consumer spending anyway!) it shows that there's amisunderstanding of how the economy works and how public sector wages are funded.

@BeatrixPottery I support because there is no alternative esp with the NHS.
if we continue as we are going, then there will be no NHS as staff leave for better paid and less stressful jobs and fewer younger people want to go into healthcare.

all very well banging on about harm to patients by the Govt but that was happening pre strikes and they didn't shout or care about that did they?

Just look @WiseUpJanetWeiss 's post who seems to think wage rises will support the poor old little private sector (much of which is B2b and couldn't be directly supported by consumer spending anyway!) it shows that there's amisunderstanding of how the economy works and how public sector wages are funded.

Go on then, explain why I'm wrong.

Not saying this is true in the case of the person on the thread, but in general it can be.

I've lost count of the number of times I've thought a patient was completely reasonable and polite when in the clinic room with me, but the nurses outside have told me they've been an abusive cunt the entire time they've been waiting.

Irony is, if the appointment was running late or whatever, It's much more likely to be my fault (or management for overbooking the clinic).

They get really good pensions and working conditions. That's all part of the pay and needs to be considered

Not sure they have good working conditions, it sounds pretty horrific on some shifts at the moment. But they do have good pensions and benefits that need to be looked at along with salary as a whole package.

Good working conditions? Please be specific. At one point part of my employment concerned the treatment of nurses by the general public.

I would not have put up with the things they did. It started with general rudeness and went up to serious physical and sexual assault: horrifying.

No I'm not willing for my family to pay more. We use money now to shore up this shit show by way of paying for private healthcare and on top of the insurance private GPs appointments because you literally could drop dead whilst being in the telephone queue each morning trying to get an appointment at our surgery.

The money should come from cutting pensions and stopping using agency workers, employing them on a higher wage. Most of the agency workers in our ward were staff that worked there anyway. They'd be part time, do an NHS shift in the morning then an agency shift in the afternoon.
Just pay them more to only work for the nhs taking the agencies out of the equation.

If wages were higher they'd pay more tax, be happier as they'd feel valued and wouldn't be in receipt of in work benefits hopefully (which are the stupidest idea rolled out by any government ever!)

I know they're asking for something ludicrous like 19% at the moment but what do they actually want. Are they going in with a high number hoping to get that or is there room for negotiation?? If the government said they'd give 10% would that be ok?

We don't know do we because the Government won't talk to them. This is basic industrial relations where you start with a figure and come down.

That is how pay negotiations work if you negotiate: since the Government don't, then I assume that nurses will just leave and take agency work.

Give over reducing their pensions. Then there would be nothing to stop them leaving and just charging a huge agency rate to make that good.

The above is why public sector workers get high rates when they privately contract.

You probably shouldn't be phoning your GP for something that could result in dropping dead....

Learned helplessness is the fault of an all-encompassing NHS though.

Easier said than done.

Which do you do first? Cut the agency workers and go short until you train and appoint replacements? Or train and appoint replacements while still paying for agency workers...

What if you stop agency workers, and nobody else wants to train because they can get better pay and conditions elsewhere?

This.

But assuming it was necessary, yes, I would be happy to pay more tax for this.

Despite the fact, other industries with significantly more stress and responsibilities have lower rates of sickness.

Which industries might those be?

Are they also working with skeleton staff and wondering how they are going to pay their bills, and getting pressured to do extra shifts because there's no-one to cover?

Or do they have decent wages/hours/ time off in lieu if the work an extra shift?

Asking for a wonderful health service.

My theory is, to pull the sick pay and I think the sickness will fall significantly.

Sickness won't fall. Taking sick time off work might - and that's exactly what we need - ill people trying to take care of even iller ones.

Have you ever tried joined-up thinking?

If the government believes that their approach is correct then there is a simple way to settle it - call a general election. We'll find out via the ballot box if people agree with them or not.

Fixthebone you give the agency workers the positions they're struggling to fill at a decent wage. They're obviously already qualified and most of them already work for the nhs.

To say I'd drop dead whilst waiting is more of a tongue in cheek joke. I mean I'd already be dead if I had to wait on an ambulance. 111 called me one for a suspected heart attack a few months ago (I did tell them I wasn't having a heart attack but due to my sex and age they insisted they needed one) took 90 minutes.

What? The ones who already work for the NHS? they already have a FT job.
Do you want them to have two FT jobs?

What they are doing is working a BH or a weekend to earn extra money.

A decent wage is what they are striking for.

Not sure many of them will go for the same job, for half the money.

Its called market forces, and its been brought into every part of the NHS, apart from wages, because as a monopoly employer, with a generous pension scheme and a positive ideology, many people were happy to sacrifice cash, for security and principles.

The value of the pensions have been eroded by 25% in the last 10 years, significantly more for high earners, and wages are 15% down on 2008 for most afc staff, closer to 30% for consultants.

Can't have it both ways, and employees know this, 10 years ago if someone was off sick, there was usually enough people around to cover, now, with everything already on minimum staffing levels, if there's a gap, the trust is going to have to pay a market rate, or close that service.

It's so desperately close to the wire that I was an hour a way from closing one of the largest major trauma centres in the country because a single junior doctor overnight wasn't given IT access needed to do their job.

No it's the market. Public sector wages plus pension good.

Agency wages that don't meet that and a third more? No, not worth.

Tories seem to like market forces except for things like public sector jobs. Cut the pension and give an agency rate? No, people don't take that deal.

Btw the logic is immaculate- the Tories have always "get a better job".

I don't know why they seem surprised that they do. Good luck to them. The Government don't value them, it seems that public don't either. Unless you have money to pay for private medicine I would really suppose them while they still are motivated by something else other than money.

And soon after that, consultants.

You think the nurses are militant, consultants are considering asking for 35% pay restoration, plus inflation linked salary, plus fixing the pension scheme.

@chopc A key issue in our economy is that too few people work, and that working people work too few hours. Before you even talk about tax rates people have to go to work in the first place. There’s a lot of virtue signalling on this threat but in another recent thread 50% of people didn’t even think they had a moral obligation to work, let alone pay higher taxes - www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4679367-are-we-morally-obliged-to-work. Given that we seem to need more money to look after people who can’t work and people aren’t willing to work voluntarily, in my opinion the first step has to be more action getting people into work. This could be carrot eg NHS fast track for people with health conditions limiting their ability to work, and stick eg stricter conditions for disability benefits.