Why are nurses always bottom of the list?

[TommyAndGinaAreHalfWayThere]

Why is it whenever public service pay rises are announced, nurses are always given less than other sectors.

I have nothing against teachers - I couldn’t do their job but why do they always get more than nurses? Genuine question.

It always seems to me that nursing is seen by the government as a “lesser job”.

Is there a wonder nobody wants to do it anymore? When I started university there were 300 students in our cohort. After one year this dropped to 200. By the time we graduated it had dropped to 150.

Off all the nurses I graduated with I would estimate that more than half have since left - myself included. I have a close friendship group from uni -

me - left after 7 years
friend 1 - left after 6 years
friend 2 - still nursing
Friend 3 - left after 4 years
friend 4 - left after 5 years
friend 5 - moved to Australia 😂

Is there any wonder? Over worked, under paid and generally treated like shit.

Because it’s still overwhelmingly female.
And because the NHS can easily recruit abroad.
Also because Nursing Unions are weak and many nurses themselves would never take any industrial action.
And because the number of nurses is so high, the government know any award would cost more to implement.

I fairness it wasn’t just Cullen and the RCN that fucked that. I’m still pissed if that unison recommended their members voted it through because it was the only thing we were going to get and then literally hours after the vote passed told everyone it was a terrible deal (which it was).

Because nurses are completely underappreciated and mostly women so not seen as important as other jobs even though we all know they do all the shit work for shit pay. I don't blame them for trying to get more money because the amount of shit they deal with isn't compensated for in any way

My daughter earned more per hour in her first job at McDonald’s than I did as a newly qualified midwife with a first class degree.

When you expect people to have lives in their hands, with all the stress and trauma that comes with that, but give them no support and pay them peanuts, they will leave. Out of the 70 midwives I trained with only 25 are still working in health care at all, most of them in specialist roles that are not ward based. Conditions on hospital wards are absolutely horrific, for both patients and staff, and utterly inhumane.

As a Health Care Assistant in mental health it's astonishing how pay has dropped so badly since 2010. Now about a pound over minimum wage. For dealing with some patients who assault you (more assaults in MH then A&E by the way), spit at you, swear at you and for organisations that are so top heavy with layers of higher managers it's sickening.
When I started in the NHS the pay was several pounds above minimum wage.
Not for a minute do I think that there shouldn't be a real living minimum wage but how on earth can the NHS expect to retain staff to do a job with very challenging people for such a crap wage. This is why so many shifts are filled by agency which actually costs more. Madness.
I know the question was about registered nurses and I fully support an above inflation rise for all staff from band 2 to 6 and I will vote to not accept.

You all need to be prepared for an all out strike or you will not get what you need.

The Govt has the money, it can rightly, re arm Ukraine and increase defence spending.

Its a political choice not to pay healthcare staff a decent wage, one that appears to be Labour are making too.

I’m not trying to denigrate the professions - quite the opposite in fact. We do not have the skills required to do those jobs or frankly, often the inclination yet in reality, we are expected to step into those roles. It’s outrageous from everyone’s point of view!

They’ve had to give one to HCAs early in the NHS because the top of band 2 and possibly bottom of band 3 have fallen below minimum wage.

Strongly suspect that at some point NHS are going to have to up band a lot of people. We’ve already had to up band the nursery staff because we can’t recruit.

Civil servants ie DWP and HMRC staff etc are always bottom of the pile

Because nurses are reluctant to strike whereas teachers are less so. In crude terms, fight the bosses not each other - don't snipe over who's got the best (pathetic) offer, but think about how to mobilise.

I often feel this about policing. I think for us it’s because we aren’t allowed to strike. I understand why we can’t but I feel they take advantage of this as we are a bit of a toothless tiger when asking to raises etc

This. In spades. Extremely sad to see the RCN falling for this hook, line and sinker this morning. Getting mad at doctors for getting a slightly less rubbish deal than them instead of getting mad at the government for being the master of all this. Divide and conquer has really started and I just wish the nurses had a less crap union to deal with this.

Agreed. Police officers have one of the hardest jobs out there and I think they are very underpaid for all the work they do! It's a very challenging job and needs to be fairly compensated. In fact, due to the rise of WFH, these front line police, NHS, teaching jobs etc. the kind of ones that can't be done from home will have no choice but to start paying higher salaries to offset people leaving for WFH jobs with comparable salaries. Everything will get so much worse before the penny drops though.

Given its huge size, RCN seems to be utterly useless when it comes to fighting for members' pay & conditions. It should be enormously powerful but seems to be pretty much toothless.

AHP's never get mentioned. Physio's are the third largest registered workforce in the NHS and never hear a word about rehab or pay and conditions for them (which are utterly shit, by all accounts).

because nursing still isnt seen as a profession, same for a lot of HCP roles, they are seen as vocational caring roles mostly taken up by females. Despite the fact it now requires a university degree.

The whole system needs an overhall. half the nursing workforce is band 5, after 4 years, you are top of that, whether you have 4 or 40 years experience. Not every nurse wants to go into management and sit in an office, or wants to do a masters to progress to advanced practioner levels, or specialise, some just want to stay bedside nursing, and we need some to stay bedside as there arent enough band 6+ roles for everyone, but the pay being capped at 4 years experience is crazy. Im still top of band 5 as my area is extreemly comptetitive for band 6 + roles. In all honesty i havent even put myself forward for one yet as there are far more experienced nurses applying everytime one comes up.

Yes we have the option to work more - i myself work all nights, and as many sat/sun nights as possible to survive, plus atleast 2 extra shifts a month. Im a single mum of 3, though now older teenagers, but i have done this for many years, and missed majority of weekends with my kids, in order to make the pay something we can all live on. Its rubbish, but atleast there is the possibility of working more.

This shouldnt be the solution though, we shouldnt be backed in to the corner of bank shifts, overtime, and only working unsociable hours to get by. and they pay increases for band 5 should be expanded to the first 10 years of being qualified, not 4, as theres no incentive to stay in the roll.

As for this pay rise, its better than the 2.8% that was initially rumoured, and atleast its not septemeber this year. Still not great, rubbish its the lowest out of all those announced, but its not going to hcnage since its an award not a negiotation.

I never understand the argument about having to pay for parking. Most workers pay for parking, why would healthcare be different? In addition, because we have hospitals and care facilities in virtually every town, most people in the NHS are able to work very closely to where they live so commuting costs are lower than most.

I am a health professional and the only one in my family. I have noticed comments from various family members that it is something people who aren’t very intelligent do, who didn’t get the grades, who don’t have any better aspirations. They seem to really believe this! They have no idea the skills needed and some of the incredibly complex situations that nurses deal with every shift.

I think this mentality of 'they always want more money' and 'why do teachers get more than nurses' is what really harms peoples and their chances to get their point across.

It needs to be all of us that deserve the pay rise, because we do! But again, as many people have said, it's down to the strength of unions.

I don't work in the nhs. Yesterday listening to the announcement the minister was saying how money is important, but also making people feel valued. All I could think was that money would be the thing that made me feel the most valued in that position!

Nurses didn’t get a payrise for years. They’ve watched their value eroded on the promise that it was only short erm (a massive lie) They’re just asking for parity of salary to the way they were recognised twenty years ago. And each payrise still leaves them short of that. That’s why

Given we rarely get a pay rise, and usually just a below-inflation cost of living rise we’ve actually had year-on-year pay cuts.

I find this interesting, because I would say this is probably true of most roles that aren't the high-flying £100k types.

(I absolutely agree though that nurses should be paid more.)

I agree, but that's sort of the point too - teachers aren't actually doing the jobs of social workers, counsellors, etc. because we aren't trained to and don't have the time, skills or resources to do it, but nor are we able to access the social workers or counsellors for the children we're supporting. Therefore, we end up trying to do what we can to fill some of those roles because the alternative is that the children get absolutely no support and things get even worse. Schools are having to pick up a lot of the work that social workers and counsellors are supposed to be doing because, due to underfunding, the waiting lists and thresholds for support are too high - a bit like someone carrying out CPR while they wait for the ambulance they called to arrive, we know we aren't properly fixing anything but we can't stand by and just do our jobs and wait for help that, sadly, isn't usually coming.

I've had plenty of jobs where I haven't had to pay to park at my workplace. It's not that unusual.

If you have a 9-5 office job and you don't want to pay for parking you can use public transport but that's not necessarily an option when you work long shifts. It's not really the fact that they have to pay for parking full stop, it's the fact that many hospitals/Trusts have increased the cost of parking permits for staff year on year whilst the staff are struggling because their pay has stalled and everything has become more expensive. When I was a HCP in a former life staff didn't have to pay to park at the hospital at all, now they do. It may not be the biggest problem Nurses and HCA's are facing but it illustrates the fact that NHS staff are getting a shittier deal than they used to, whilst the work has become more complex and demanding in many ways.

All public sector employees are overworked and underpaid with eroding working conditions. Seems more sensible to stand together than whining why are we bottom of the pile boohoo.

You are right. Most salaries across ALL sectors have lost ground, in some cases since covid, they are way behind, particularly if you factor in the huge losses anyone that was furloughed had to deal with. The difference is unions - I don't mean that unions impact the salary changes, just that unions are well positioned to shout about it and do. The reason you don't hear about hairdressers or chefs of admin or brickies or plumbers or zoo keepers or recruiters or accountants or gardeners or pretty much every non-public sector employee shouting about their wage issues is that they're mostly not unionised therefore there is nobody to shout for them. As a nation we seem to believe this myth that everyone is happy with their salary increases and that 'teachers and nurses' suffer more than anyone is simply because every other sector is so fragmented and there is nobody to represent them.