1% Payrise for NHS workers

5 minutes on Google informed me that this is a recommendation for all NHS staff except for doctors and some senior staff.

Whether a person is a former NHS worker or not, using the rationale that "at least they've still got a job" is an insult. The people who have been made redundant during this pandemic (including me, BTW) never had to turn up day after day and put their lives at risk dealing with an illness nobody had any experience with. Sure, other professions had to face difficult circumstances as well, but that doesn't make the 1% recommendation any less derisory.

Apparently this is just one recommendation from one advisory body and the Government are free to ignore it. Before I read this thread I would have said there wouldn't be anybody in the country who would criticise the government for rewarding NHS staff, but apparently I would have been wrong.

This is a political choice not an economic one.

One only has to give it a little thought to understand that.

So whether you support the 1% or not mostly indicates your place on the political spectrum.

I'm afraid I haven't read all of this thread but there are, I believe, one of two reasons why the government is doing this. Either they are trying to stop the demands of the workers in the NHS going above the 2.1 agreed and passed by parliament and are using this as a "worst-case" and will eventually U-turn back to the 2.1 expecting a sigh of relief and happiness all round at getting what was agreed in the first place or, just as Thatcher set out to smash the miners' unions and close the mines, Johnson is determined to smash the NHS unions and thereby privatise the mines.

They way they have worked and the pressure they have been under, still are and will be for some time to come deserves more recognition than 1%. I think it is an insult. Out of all the public sector workers they have been right on the front line, risking their lives and health on a daily basis having to deal with the most awful situations. They were told by government they would be looked after so DO IT, I am embarrassed by this paltry increase. We need to keep our nurses and doctors not risk losing them by them feeling undervalued and demoralised.

Spot on WW2! They are just showing their true colours with this insult to NHS staff.

privatise the mines. privatise the NHS.

Lizbethan55 I agree with your comments. Whilst those staff who have been on the front line throughout the pandemic deserve a decent payrise, but for those who have not been at any greater risk and have worked only the same hours or less there is less justification for a pay rise. For example, I have a neighbour who is employed by the NHS dealing with telephone inquiries. He has worked at home throughout lockdown. Where as another neighbour has worked throughout lockdown keeping us supplied with food, face to face with the public with very little protection, been subjected to constant abuse all for the minimum wage.

It will be interesting to see what the regular opinion polls say over the next few days.

I suspect that this !% for the NHS might have a significant effect on the government's standing.

whitewave I don’t agree at all that this issue reflects your place on the political spectrum. For example, I would support a decent payrise for those NHS employees who have been on the front line throughout Covid including porters etc as well as nurses. However, I would not support a pay rise across the board for all NHS employees who have not been at risk or worked longer hours. So where does that put me on the political spectrum?

I don’t know what people class as on the front line. Would you class a Works and Estates employee who has to attend any area of the hospital to fix things, or a consultant who is working from home doing virtual consultations with patients who can’t attend hospital appointments or reporting X-ray films, or a clerk who has been redeployed from a job in headquarters to receive patients at a vaccination centre as being on the front line?

There’s a huge myth that there are lots of NHS employees who aren’t affected by the pandemic. I can honestly say that virtually all of them are. Working from home doesn’t mean people are swinging the lead, although that appears to be the implication - it’s been an incredibly difficult time, why can’t people just acknowledge that?

I don’t think that people working from home are ‘swinging the lead’ as you say but there is a vast difference between people in face to face situations with covid patients and those who are not in that situation that is, working from home.

Casdon. I am working at a vaccination centre. I wouldn't even dream of even beginning to think I am anywhere near the front line. Why would I? As far as I am concerned the front line is anyone, nurses, doctors, porters etc who is genuinely putting their health or even life at risk by working day after endless day caring for those who are ill with Covid. WFH is not swinging the lead, but it is hardly life threatening.

I have a friend who is a very experienced senior nurse / nurse trainer who is married to a GP. Had an email from her yesterday - they have both resigned and are off to Canada. Good luck to them, but a loss to the NHS.

Gwyneth and Lizbethann55 I can see that you think only those staff whose lives were in most danger as in direct contact with known COVID+ patients are the ones who should get a pay rise. I don’t agree, everybody has been affected, and how divisive would that be to the future running of services where staff on the same grades get paid differential rates based on where in the service they happened to be working during the pandemic?

Casdon. But they are all getting a pay rise. They are all getting 1%. Admittedly not much, but more than most and those who have worked through but not in danger do still have a job. 1% or no job at all? continuing pension payments or losing absolutely everything you have ever worked for? And that is why I think those who have genuinely worked themselves into the ground should get a bonus rather than a pay rise.

Nurses (and doctors) should be paid properly but IMV it should not be linked to this pandemic, which has been pretty demanding for some NHS workers but certainly not for all of them. My daughter is a core trainee anaesthetist. At her hospital as in most others, all elective work was cancelled and theatres were open only for emergency cases. When not in theatre she did her share in intensive care, either with covid patients or with non covid. She was very busy at times, PPE is very uncomfortable to wear and at times the work was distressing, but that is what she has trained for. I don't think she feels she deserves a pay rise for doing her bit during a pandemic. However, because the general pay for NHS staff is fairly low, they are often short staffed and need to bring in agency staff. This costs the NHS a huge amount of money. Nurses and doctors can earn a lot more money not being on the permanent staff or by working the odd shift of overtime. This is not a good use of our money.

I don't know whether the Government is deliberately running down the service that the NHS offers in order to say that it is not fit for purpose and should be privatised, which is one idea.

Or whether the lack of any sort of business experience and expertise among the Government means that they don't understand that this is reducing the loyalty and numbers of staff, therefore, as foxie48 has just said, increasing the need for more expensive agency staff and thus making the service more expensive than it needs to be.

Or again, whether it is a ruse so that they can change their minds, increase the offer, and look generous.

Or is it another way to make us all start arguing among ourselves over who deserves what, thus absolving the Government of any responsibility.

Who knows?

Well said.

My quote disappeared! That was to foxie

I don’t think I’ve seen any mention in this thread of the job which I consider to be very much on the front line, the paramedic. They are the ones who are going into people’s homes to bring seriously ill covid patients (as well as others) to hospital. They do not have the same level of PPE or sanitised working conditions that you find in hospital. They are extremely exposed to various sources of infection and their starting salary for what is now a graduate profession is around £21.000, Teachers, police and nursing staff have starting salaries around £24-26k.

A moratorium on any salary increases might be more appropriate until we have some idea of how we’re even going to start repaying the vast debt that the country has incurred.

Perhaps we should give the NHS staff a decent pay rise and then have an enquiry into the amount of money wasted on government contracts that went to their mates without tender. And then get some of that money back.

A moratorium on any salary increases might be more appropriate until we have some idea of how we’re even going to start repaying the vast debt that the country has incurred.

I would stop worrying about that 'vast debt', because there isn't one. However, the government would like you to believe that there is one because it very much suits their objective of slashing state spending and privatising the NHS.

Please read this. It explains it nice and clearly

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2021/03/02/the-national-debt-paranoia/

Borrowing /issuing Gilts might make sense in terms of capital investment and longer term growth; but much less sense to fund current expenditure

Katek

Borrowing /issuing Gilts might make sense in terms of capital investment and longer term growth; but much less sense to fund current expenditure

There is no 'borrowing' going on. The larger part of the deficit is QE. This is money creation. It is owed to no-one.

You're talking as though the country is a business. It's not. Neither is it a household. The economics of running either is nothing like that of a country.

At some point QE is unwound. Nobody says running a country is like running a household. But there's still a need to remember that there are real resources involved, in both cases.
Think I’m going to leave conversation here MaizieD or we could still be talking about this in months!