AIBU to think a potential 2% pay rise for the NHS staff is ridiculous?

[Sunflowers68]

NHS England is cautioning against giving employees raises of more than 2%. is A band 2 salary is now only 10p above minimum wage due to the recent increase in the minimum wage. Surely, a 2% increase is insufficient for a job this challenging? If you are still working in the NHS, can you share your reasons why?

NHS worker who previously worked in private sector and I completely disagree with this statement.

I don't have children, I suspect if I did my request would have been granted. Another bone of contention for me.

No opportunities for extra hours in my profession/health board. There's no money in the budget. They're even cutting down on bank shifts because they can't afford it.

I do work in the NHS and there is not a chance I will be able to carry on in my role until I'm 67. To get a decent pension I need to work in a role where I am paid well for three consecutive years from the age of 57 (though I'm fully expecting this to go up).
I'm 50. I think I've got maybe five more years then I'm done. So no gold plated pension for me, sadly.

My wife is currently in a hospital bed in London recovering from neurosurgery relating to a brain tumour.

I can not praise the nurses highly enough. They have been so kind, caring, patient and loving to my precious wife. Much more so than their professional standards dictate.

The government knows they will get great work from them without paying them properly so they don't.

The nurses have effectively shot themselves in the foot by being so good.

(Oh the neurosurgeon was pretty damn good too but I'm guessing he (quite rightly) gets paid a lot.)

All nhs employees are eligible to join pension scheme… but I imagine many band 2 staff will take home much less than minimum wage after pension contributions, tax & NI.

my brother is a plumber….his hourly rate to install a boiler is more than the neurosurgeon gets!

I work for the NHS and have done for the last 16 years. I suffered a complete burn out approx 3 years ago and work in a more local setting with more sociable hours now. I love my job and the satisfaction that I can make a difference. I’ve stayed because I genuinely can’t imagine doing something else and I’m 50 so don’t want to mess around with pension.

What do you do for a living?

They are quite similar jobs.

The neurosurgeon drained some fluid and is thinking of fitting a header tank next time.

Could you get your brother to quote?

I’m a band 6 district nurse on the starting wage of the band. My mental health alone has been incredibly tested by the role, never mind the state my back is in. I contribute 9.8% to my pension. I know of many colleagues who are currently opted out because they’re trying to save as much going out as possible. I ended up needing to get a lease car through NHS Fleet Solutions when my old car gave out and we didn’t have the money to get another one. My mileage needs to be high because of this, most of my mileage goes on my job as I have a 25 mile round trip commute (you don’t get to chose your own base) before I even start to see patients. The cost per month of the fleet vehicle is ridiculous. For some reason I don’t get the full tax free allowance, my tax code is lower and I don’t understand why despite querying it a number of times. I pick up additional shifts because we are always short staffed, though these have to be through the bank and aren’t classed as overtime even though it’s for my own team. We don’t have permits, many of our patients are in the city centre and as such we either pay for parking or if there isn’t parking because it’s resident only permits (and not all patients have a permit), then we end up with a parking fine. The trust won’t pay the fines for us or back to us, the unions are painfully slow to do anything about it. The amount in parking alone to do our actual jobs day in day out is scandalous.

At the end of the day I’m still in my job because of the patients, they are my priority. That and keeping a roof over my children’s heads. Some days it is really testing.

Currently none of the HCA's I work with now eligible for things like fleet cars which used to be a nhs perk. Band 2,3,4 using this scheme will be facing a pay cut in reality

In fact I've recently had a staff member declined for a bike to work scheme support because the salary sacrifice scheme puts them below minimum wage. Same with some childcare schemes and even car parking.

I've even seen one trust that's had to cancel their lottery scheme because the £1 a week was putting people under minimum wage

It's really awful for those staff because before hand they were paying pre tax for cars. Now they are forced to look else where pay higher amounts of tax, higher lease car fees but it's allowed because it doesn't make the trust look like it's paying less than minimum wage

@Warmfuzzyblankets I think what you have forgot to add to your post is. In NHS as a band 2 HCA you work unsociable hours, nights and days all in the same week, 13 hour shifts and there is no Monday to Friday role unless you bag outpatients. An early shift is still 8 hours long and so is a late shift and these are from 7am till 3pm and 12.00am till 8pm.

Bank shifts have been utterly diabolical since last year and this year also! I thought bank shifts would of picked up but there isn't 1 single shift as a HCA that's released on the "bank" for June. NHS also are not family friendly and if you are a single mother it's extremely hard. Personally I feel they need an overall of the hours available especially as a single parent.

The paper work has also increased compared to 10 years ago too as a B2.

Yes, our Trust has suspended parking permit payments for band 2 for now until the pay increase comes in when they will collect the outstanding payments from the back pay but as you say a 2% pay rise won't be enough 🤨

This is such a stupid thing to say. Of course private sector jobs can be just as stressful as an nhs jobs and hell some nhs jobs will be really chilled out and easy. There is to broad a range on both sides to compare.

All of this! I was a single mum working in outpatient maternity as a band 2, absolutely loved my job at school hours and always did extra when needed and I could.
A new head of midwifery put a stop to all that and insisted we all rotated and did unsociable shifts which were totally undoable for me. It was unnecessary andI couldn't stay. So I went into admin and tbh it's been a good break. I have done course after course and progress to a band 5 in an area I love and there's scope for me to be a 7 eventually. I got lucky, I got good management and a small community trust that invested in my development when I was there. At band 2 I was a doing everything in including taking blood, that a midwife did in clinic apart from measure the fungal height and listen to the heartbeat. The rest was my job and I often covered reception too!

In the private sector at the moment there is the continued threat of redundancy that comes with an unstable market. Gross pay inc pension likely to be lower for most people in private sector v public at a comparible level. Stress and responsibility will be job and person specific. Both sectors will have roles more personally demanding than the other. Id expect the public sector to be generally more supportive if you needed time off because of this though.

Your weekend enhancements will still be the same or a bit more tbh there's not much pay difference between a B2 and B3 anyway.

@socks1107 I can believe you were doing more it sounds about right. Ahhh sounds like you have made cracking progress and things have picked up for you, well done you. The NHS is not for single parents unless you have a fabulous support network. They promote that sh*t but its a thing of the past I know a few people on "term time only contracts" they don't offer those any longer in my trust unless you had one from years ago already.

Midwife here. I’m still with the NHS because I adore the women I look after and am devoted to them.

The pay is more than I’ve ever earned before and there is scope to progress. Im relatively new though and still in the phase where I’d do the job for free! 😂 we will see how I feel in ten years!

I'm a teacher and I see new staff with your attitude regularly.

Thing is, by working the way you do you're messing things up for everybody. There is no need to pay people properly if people like you will do it all for next to nothing.

The annual leave works out pretty much the same. If you do a 9-5 role you get bank holidays off unlike most NHS roles you are expected to work bank hol and the Xmas period and NY also. If this is what is selling you... join with NHS!

The rise should be the current rate of inflation at least, anything less is effectively a pay cut.

In my workplace our board decided not to award any pay rise this year as they believed the cost of living crisis was over!

I totally agree that even an entry level role in the NHS should be better paid than just a few pence over the minimum wage.

With spending needed absolutely everywhere including pay rises the government can’t/wont increase higher than that.
Unfortunately many of the NHS staff are unlikely to walk away to private industry and the government knows it.
Im in civil service- I haven’t seen anything about pay rises yet as it is still with the unions. I doubt it will be much better! Our pay was restructured last year to align closer to industry- still a lot lower but we get a better pension. Every other perk (sick leave, mat leave, private healthcare etc) now been matched by the main private competitors.

I've worked in a private hospital and for a private healthcare provider..the stress was worse. At least in the NHS I don't have any worry about profit and billing. Meetings about targets and feedback, and Google/trustpilot reviews. The management were real cutthroat. Plus the pay wasn't any better really. The only upside was the free parking and nicer uniform 😀