To say the government is right to impose minimum service levels on nurses

[Stackss]

So today the nursing unions have announced they will be withdrawing from A&Es, intensive care units, chemotherapy and other key services. Now, I am not a conservative voter by any means and I do think nurses should get a fair pay rise (although I don’t think 10% is affordable).

However, I don’t think it is acceptable for unions to be putting lives at risk by refusing to provide life-saving care. The armed forces and prison officers are not allowed to strike- I would now support minimum service levels being extended to nurses to prevent the unions doing this.

I suspect I am not the only one and the unions need to be careful not to shoot themselves in the foot.

You’re missing the point lives are already at risk! I voted with my feet and left healthcare and the NHS. You have to look at the bigger picture. If everyone left like me there would be no service at all. The only answer is to pay more, train more and retain more. For me no amount of pay rise would tempt me back to healthcare and I am a 20 year specialist in my field no longer using any of my skills. So much happier though even if I am poorer.

@Discovereads Half of the increase was overseas, non EAA nurses... there has been much debate on their training and language skills and the amount of additional supervision they need.

Add the work place/nhs related reasons to leave and its almost 50%....

Many vacancies are filled by using agency bank staff, not the most efficient way to manage staff or costs.

Anyway, the thread is about strikes and the Govts new laws on min service levels.. which the govt will mandate are way higher than on non strike days.. effectively banning strikes or you get the sack.

My dad is a nurse. His pension scheme meant he could retire mid 50s, but he planned to keep on working beyond that as most people in the same position as his did.

this was 10 years ago and even then the impact of everything being cut and the bullying from management made him decide to walk away because it was no longer the profession he loved. He was amazing at his job but wasn’t being able to do his job anymore.

things have got a lot worse since.

Actually they do still have some Nurses working to meet their own minimum levels. The government idea is just to punish and make striking harder. Nurses care about patients they won't just leave them all to die

You're consistently ignoring the point that the current staffing crisis means that minimum standards are not being meant on a non strike day.

So yes bring in minimum standards and then the Govt would have to do something to ensure the staff are there.

@Ecoo after things like student loan repayments and parking charges, do you think they’re high paid?

We have a problem in this country with low wages generally. The average wages are crap.

It's an odd argument to make anyway. Even if there wasnt a recruitment and retention crisis (there is, not just for nurses and not just in the UK but globally for all aspects of health and social care)

Hcp deserve a decent wage for the work they do.

@Ecoo

Depends what your comparing it to.

Its fairly low for the level of skill and responsibilities

Exactly! The government refuses to analyse where the shortages lie and in which speciality, so how can they define minimum levels…

The other key point the unions miss is that we’ve just spent almost 2 years in lockdowns to ‘protect the NHS’. These have cost hundreds of billions of pounds- I suspect we would have more money to fund pay rises had lockdowns not taken place.

And yet, the unions constantly demanded harder and longer lockdowns.

Maybe if we hadn't had so many staff vacancies, more beds, more nurses trained to use ventilators, appropriate PPE or even a pandemic plan we might have been able to have shorter (preferably no) lockdowns.

Sorry I missed where the nurses made that decision?

and why is it only public sector pay rises that spur inflation? Why not private sector?

Sorry but get your head out of the sand and look towards what the actual issue is - the Tories.

We needed lockdowns because the NHS was crumbling and the government did not act fast enough. Unions could see that their staff were at the front line - and the government failed to make them safe. Did you miss the scandals of no PPE at the start of covid? Did you miss the utter failure to put air filters across hospitals and schools to keep the air disease free?

And plenty of companies did very well out of lockdown. Plenty of companies continued to make profits, not every business was negatively affected.

You sound like a Daily Mail AI bot who lacks critical thinking.

@Stackss Are you going to answer the point several previous posters have made on minimum staffing levels not being met on non-strike days or are you going to carry on ignoring that and continue to argue your point in bad faith?

I was going to point this out, too. I know a couple of people who do enough hours each year to maintain their registrations, but whose main employment is not nursing. One of them does it so that if she gets pissed off with whatever she's currently doing, she can jack it in and do agency work while she looks for something.

My MP is a nurse and maintains her registration too, she never tires of mentioning it in every interview she does.

Still, she'll be glad she did when she loses her seat at the next GE and has to get a proper job.

I am still looking for the evidence but I can only find anecdotes not actual evidence that increasing wages leads to inflation.

It was something that was bandied about in the 1970s when inflation was already high and to argue against giving payrises, but no credible link made between the two.

I will keep looking but I suspect it may be a junk theory spouted by economists who want to support neo-liberal extreme capitalism which, funnily enough, always seems to favour the very wealthy.

Did you know that there were more billionaires created during lock down/the pandemic than at any other time?

I wonder what the govt is doing to tackle the impact of greed on inflation?

Putting aside your issue with the word haemorrhaging (pretty sure you’d have issues if you lost 11% or your blood volume) what exactly do you attribute the problems you’re seeing to then?

^This

Inflation is driven by greed.

It is backward thinking to claim that paying a decent living wage is the cause of inflation.

Businesses seek to protect profit - and they will raise prices to do so. And those price rises cause inflation (look at the massive profits made by energy companies).

Businesses could raise wages (and are) and take a temporary hit to profit, but still make a profit. The world won’t end.

Businesses don’t have to raise prices unless they are running out of cash but they do to keep making profits. Energy companies are a great example - we are told that our high energy prices are because of the war in Ukraine - well if so, then why aren’t they struggling? Where are the high costs falling exactly? The reason goes back to greed. People with resources will choose to exploit that by raising prices. It’s the nature of capitalism and isn’t a law of nature. It’s humans being greedy!

The government have choices. They could choose to make pay awards just below inflation. This would help with recruitment and retention, improve tax takes as it will help the economy as more people have money to spend. If businesses choose to put up prices to take advantage- that’s because they’re greedy and want more profit.

But as I said, I’m trying to find evidence that it’s increased pay that causes inflation as opposed to businesses wanting more money.

I agree.

Starmer was leading the call for more Lockdowns -

www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/03/keir-starmer-calls-for-immediate-lockdown-in-england-as-covid-cases-soar

@Believeitornot

I think in the private sector they are forecasting and average of 5% wage increase.

Obviously that means that the highest wage increases will be much more. Some are forecasting at 15% and these will be on very high wages already

Do you think the govt will step in and say no? That will increase inflation, you can't do that!

Of course they won't

Funny how on threads about higher earners its always argued they deserve their ridiculous high wages because they work hard and we have to be competitive to prevent brain drain.

Yet talks about NHS wages it's always oh they should just accept a pittance and be grateful for it!

Makes no sense

The shortage figure is a target set by NHS and it is arbitrary

So there can be a target met and once it is an increased 40k target can be created which then translates to shortage

More or Less did a good piece recently, as they usually do, on what shortage actually meant.

Here's the cost of the Covid lockdowns

www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/22/a-year-of-covid-lockdowns-has-cost-the-uk-economy-251bn-study-says

Totally agree.

The government are bullshitting when they claim to care about patient safety.

Our local a&e is overwhelmed permanently. Government don't give a shit about how many die.

This proposal is just window dressing to appease the gullible.

This government does not give a toss about patient safety, don’t kid yourself OP.