Nurses' union prepares for strike action over 1% pay offer for NHS staff

[Northerner]

A nurses’ union is preparing for strike action as anger grows about the 1% pay rise proposed for NHS staff in England.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said that at an emergency meeting called by its governing council, members voted to set up a £35m fund to support workers facing loss of earnings owing to industrial action.

It said it would only be used by members “should they wish to take action”, cautioning that the “next steps will be decided in conjunction” with them.

The group has called the planned pay increase “pitiful”, and doctors’ groups have accused the government of a dereliction of duty after Boris Johnson’s effusive praise for health and social care workers during the pandemic.

The junior health minister Nadine Dorries said on Friday that ideally nurses would get a bigger pay rise, and she suggested the government could “move” on the issue.

Nurses' union prepares for strike action over 1% pay offer for NHS staff

Royal College of Nursing sets up fund to cover members’ lost earnings should they decide to walk out

www.theguardian.com

If there was any justice in the world the hands of all those who clapped while hypocritically planning this derisory pay rise will turn gangrenous and drop off It is as blind to the public mood as letting children go hungry in school holidays

 

[mikeyB]

They won’t be striking in Scotland (don’t know about Wales and NI) because nurses are better paid, and have been for a while. The government negotiated a pay deal, didn’t impose it without agreement. The UK government doesn’t do that. Or, should I say, by far the richest MP in Parliament, Sunak, doesn’t.

And the English government won’t be shamed into offering more for NHS workers, despite public shock and dismay.

What’s more, the millions promised in the Budget for “levelling up” that’s going to councils who need it has gone to 40odd councils, the vast majority in areas with Conservative MPs - including the Chancellor’s own constituency.

The government shows time and again, it is the most corrupt and heartless government ever seen in this country, surviving on spin and the pharmaceutical industry producing a vaccine in record time. Bugger all to do with the government, but Boris takes the credit. You couldn’t make it up.

 

[Docb]

@mikeyB, you missed out the vast amount of money given to cronies during the last year for very limited returns.

 

[SueEK]

I couldn’t believe that 1% was all they were going to give to our wonderful nurses. We don’t even like wearing a mask particularly, but look at what they have had to wear for hours on end whilst doing a dreadful job, watching patients die and colleagues die, with the fear that they may die and all the while continuing to do an incredible difficult job. It is a disgrace and shame on the government for holding them in such low esteem. Money has been handed out left right and centre for everyone else whilst sat at home watching telly. I feel quite angry about it

 

[Pumper_Sue]

I wonder how many of the public know that GP's were paid £12 for each Covid Vaccine they gave? Oh and also an extra £10 for a home visit for vaccinating the housebound.
A GP practice near me on that bases earns themselves over £25,000 each weekend.

Yes the nurses do deserve a pay rise, but where is the money coming from?

 

[Pumper_Sue]

I believe that the planned increase this year was intended to be 2.1% based on a deal signed off in 2018 but for some reason, unexplained so far, this has changed.

It has been explained, I'm not sure if you realise it or not but for the last year we have had a pandemic which has cost the government billions of pounds. Matt Hancock said it was all the government could afford at the moment. At least they have something which is a lot more than many people have.

 

[Ivostas66]

I wonder how many of the public know that GP's were paid £12 for each Covid Vaccine they gave? Oh and also an extra £10 for a home visit for vaccinating the housebound.
A GP practice near me on that bases earns themselves over £25,000 each weekend.

Yes the nurses do deserve a pay rise, but where is the money coming from?

The estimated £5.6 billion in waste during the pandemic? The Tories have squandered huge sums of public money, but hardly anyone has batted an eyelid. What about pausing/ cancelling HS2 and paying public workers a fair wage instead? An additional £3.50 a week for nurses is an absolute scandal. Perhaps corporation tax should have been raised higher than it was. A lot of companies have announced record profits during the pandemic, so a fairer system would be to tax those profits further as they are benefitting during a time when many are suffering financially.

Sadly the right leaning media seem to be using the old tactic of comparing public and private sector workers issues to cause division, rather than dealing with the real problem, which is that too many people are not being paid a decent living wage in this country.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

It has been explained, I'm not sure if you realise it or not but for the last year we have had a pandemic which has cost the government billions of pounds. Matt Hancock said it was all the government could afford at the moment. At least they have something which is a lot more than many people have.

They already budgeted for the 2.1% increase, and the government (Chancellor, specifically) said the NHS would get what it needed for the pandemic.

So choice 1, they just leave the budgeted increase alone and can say (when asked) that nurses were getting a real terms increase (probably) as planned. (So no special bonus which would have been nice, but still, a small increase.) Choice 2, they recommend reducing the planned increase, quite likely making it harder to retain and attract new nurses, so (likely) increasing use of more expensive agency nurses and making the "50,000 new nurses") pledge rather harder.

And what's the cost (of just the salary bit, so ignoring the likely cost of more agency staff)? Looks like average salary is about £34,000, and it looks like there's about 670,000 nurses (though that's for the UK, I think, so England alone would be lower), so 1% of the total bill looks about £230 million to me (per year).

Compare that saving (probably illusory because of extra costs of agency nurses) to the marginally effective "NHS" Test and Trace, to be given £15 billion extra.

Choice 2 just looks dumb to me. (Also evil, but they're Conservative so that's baked in.)

(The "saving" is probably more because it covers more than just nurses. Still looks politically stupid to me.)

 

[Amity Island]

It has been explained, I'm not sure if you realise it or not but for the last year we have had a pandemic which has cost the government billions of pounds. Matt Hancock said it was all the government could afford at the moment. At least they have something which is a lot more than many people have.

It's no so much the pandemic that's cost the government (us/our money/taxes/job losses/business closures/careers ending/school closures/holiday industry failures/ shop closures/sky high debts/borrowing/charities suffering/etc) it's the lockdowns. Leaving many, feeling that the only way out is to have the new vaccines. Vaccines should be offered to those that want it (like the flu vaccines) to help protect them from the virus, not to protect them from lockdowns.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

What about pausing/ cancelling HS2 and paying public workers a fair wage instead?

Exactly my thought too. white elephant projects like that have no place at the moment.

 

[nonethewiser]

The government shows time and again, it is the most corrupt and heartless government ever seen in this country, surviving on spin and the pharmaceutical industry producing a vaccine in record time. Bugger all to do with the government, but Boris takes the credit. You couldn’t make it up.

Well said that man.

Nurses deserve more, much more.

 

[mikeyB]

Yes the nurses do deserve a pay rise, but where is the money coming from?

From the same money pit that the government spends on illegal weapons of mass destruction, and the millions spent on F35 aircraft (£8 million+ apiece) to put on to empty aircraft carriers. From the same money pit the government wants to spend on a tunnel from Scotland to Ireland. From the same money pit that’s paid billions into useless test and trace systems.

 

[Leadinglights]

Although NHS staff have had pay rises over the last few years somebody did a study a year ago which showed in order to restore them to the level they were 10 years ago, accounting for inflation, they would need about a 35% pay increase. It is pleasing that the bursary for nursing students has been restored as this does in some way go towards their additional expenditure when on their unpaid hospital placements.

 

[mikeyB]

The nursing bursary was never taken away in Scotland, likely because University Tuition Fees are free in Scotland (for Scotland resident students). Scotland has always been keen on education and learning. It was a generally literate country at least a century before the same could be said of England.

 

[Northerner]

It has been explained, I'm not sure if you realise it or not but for the last year we have had a pandemic which has cost the government billions of pounds. Matt Hancock said it was all the government could afford at the moment. At least they have something which is a lot more than many people have.

The myth of everyone having to 'tighten their belts' because of the debt accumulated is endlessly repeated because it suits the government to do so. A country's accounts are not like household accounts - the UK's national debt had doubled under the past decade of 'austerity' even before the pandemic, and in that period the rich got richer whilst the poor got poorer. Which is why we were so ill-prepared for the pandemic, and why the outcome has been so poor - the most obvious example being the government's repeated failure to support people on low incomes to self-isolate