Nurses Strike -Do you support? What will it look like?

I do agree that nurses should be paid better, according to their abilities but, at the end of the day, any forced rise in salary due to striking is going to be low, I would think around 2-3%. Whereas in other industries this might be worth striking for, it doesn't directly affect the health/lives of the public who have had to seal with their treatments paused/cancelled.An already high backlog in surgeries could surge again if there is a lack of staff. I think they should 'bite-the-bullet' for now. If the changes I have hinted at in other posts over the last couple of years come into force soon (as I think they will), then everyone will benefit beyond imagination.

There are currently approximately 40,000 - 50,000 nurse vacancies in England.

I don't suppose that pay is the only reason that there are vacancies, but it's naive to think it doesn't play a part.

If you look at the long-term plans for the NHS, it's clear that nurses are expected to take on an increasingly specialist role, including work which is currently carried out by doctors, who take much longer to train and at greater cost.

If the plans succeed, the idea is that there would be efficiency savings and productivity and value for money would increase, but it's a big IF. The plans won't work, unless there are sufficient well-trained nurses.

In addition to the arguments about fairness of nurses' pay, it seems to me that there's a pragmatic argument. Unless there's investment in nurses' pay, training and working conditions (as well as infrastructure improvement), the NHS stands little chance of standing still, never mind improving.

I completely agree about the top heavy, overpaid layers. I'm the fourth one in a line of 5 generations of nurses, and I find it heartbreaking that the profession has come to this, but I am reluctantly in support of industrial action, even knowing from the 70's what hardship the Nupe strike caused in the long term. It's the front line nurses who deserve to be treated as professionals and well remunerated for their skills.

GrannyRose15

Lower paid staff get less than a shelf stacker in tescos but yet have so much responsibility."

This is simply not true.

Starting salary for nurses is £27055

Shelf stackers in Tesco's get paid £10 per hour equating to a maximum of £20800. With far less generous benefits.

Pedalling mis-information doesn't help the argument.

£20,270 is the starting salary for a healthcare support worker aka auxiliary nurse GrannyRose15. So yes, they do get paid less than shelf stackers in Tesco - and of course carry a lot more responsibility.

I agree that there are certain nurses who should have a pay rise because they are effectively acting as junior doctors. I do not agree that just because we had the pandemic that all nurses should receive a pay rise because all nurses were not involved in the direct contact with covid patients. If we are to award frontline staff then what about shopkeepers, chemists, delivery drivers who kept things going they were first kind responders too.

If nurses aren't paid a reasonable salary, they'll leave - and it accelerates the draining (or is it crumbling) of the NHS. We won't have a service, other than minimal, without investment in the people who keep it going. What happens then - with the next pandemic?

Bussy

I agree that there are certain nurses who should have a pay rise because they are effectively acting as junior doctors. I do not agree that just because we had the pandemic that all nurses should receive a pay rise because all nurses were not involved in the direct contact with covid patients. If we are to award frontline staff then what about shopkeepers, chemists, delivery drivers who kept things going they were first kind responders too.

I don't think any pay rise should be seen as a "reward" for the pandemic anyway. That's emotional blackmail and I'm more pragmatic than that.

Nurses are being used as junior doctors and it works its way along the scale. Nurses at all levels are being required to have more specialist knowledge and take on more responsibility.

Given that it's pie in the sky to think the country can suddenly find more doctors, nurses and other non-doctor health professionals are going to have to shoulder more of the burden. It's maybe not such a bad thing anyway because advances in medicine mean that no single individual can know everything about everything. Specialists are needed.

Nurse vacancies need to be filled if the NHS is going to function properly.

Cymres1

I completely agree about the top heavy, overpaid layers. I'm the fourth one in a line of 5 generations of nurses, and I find it heartbreaking that the profession has come to this, but I am reluctantly in support of industrial action, even knowing from the 70's what hardship the Nupe strike caused in the long term. It's the front line nurses who deserve to be treated as professionals and well remunerated for their skills.

I agree about being treated as professionals.

Why are people happy to pay a solicitor £250 an hour or a plumber £70 an hour, but think it's appropriate to compare a nurse's pay with a supermarket shelf stacker's pay on minimum wage?

Dog walkers, dog boarders and gardeners will be paid a higher hourly rate of pay than many nurses or ancillary nhs staff. They’re also nit subjected to the stressful demanding working conditions nhs staff face.

The idea that a pay rise can be seen as a reward for working through covid is offensive.
12 years of austerity, working conditions, pensions etc all diminished throughout that time. Pay public servants and respect them.

There is a shortage of staff which shows it is not somewhere people want to work; that may be partly due to pay. I would argue that it is also due to structure. Many businesses fail to understand the continuous need for change; the NHS appears to be one of the worst cases. The withholding of funds has, of course, been deliberate. The lack of planning for continuous change is not just down to governments, although they have also failed in this area. It also comes from the hierarchical structure of the system.

Because I hold this view, I feel only a two-pronged action plan will work. There must be pay rises, but careful ones. Not everyone in the system is overworked; I doubt that all employees are underpaid. We need a cross-party plan of where we are going with our NHS and how it is to evolve - I live in hope.

We've just unexpectedly spent a long time in A&E and it was packed full, people standing, sitting on the floor. Just dreadful and we felt sorry for the staff trying to do their best and working relentlessly. They were caring, reassuring and still had a smile for patients.

The problem was that some patients may have been able to be dealt with by a GP but there is not a good alternative to the GPs at weekends, hence everyone goes to A&E.

So many experienced staff have left and found work outside the medical professions.

Nobody pays for parking in Wales either, government policy
Casdon I did say that if we'd had to pay for parking for all those hours it could have been added stress when anxiety levels are already high.

nobody pays for parking in Wales.
Problem is if you are living in a border county you may have to go to English hospital for treatment. My local hospital sold off its car park to a private company whose charges are high.

True, Farzanah
I did wonder if we might have been seen more quickly over the border.

Charging hospital staff and sick people for car parking is very wrong.

When I worked as a CPN we had to pay for parking even though needing transport was part of our job.. and we didn't get any help towards running a car..

sandelf

Agree with Wyllow3 and LizzieDrip. 'Nurse' covers such a range of work - and specialist knowledge or not, that talking about 'pay for nurses' in the round is a bit shallow. So I don't support strikes - and I don't support agency hiring either. If NHS abandoned using agency staff they would have to have 'in house' systems to cover unforeseeable gaps - it would cause problems but that's better than undermining the whole NHS by paying over the odds - a real incentive to leave.

This is a good point about NHS administrators (or whatever the hirers of agency staff are called) paying over the odds instead of there being in house training systems for, say, A-level school leavers to learn on the job, starting doing the more menial tasks and gradually becoming well qualified nurses.

There are bound to be other problems associated with employing agency workers as well as the outlay of more money than would be needed for in-team staff.

On another point – about comparing nurses' pay to that of people who get paid by the hour – professions like teaching and nursing have never been paid by the hour. The pay is an annual salary and you are meant to do whatever it takes to do the job properly. And that of course can and does often end in burn-out.

If NHS abandoned using agency staff they would have to have 'in house' systems to cover unforeseeable gaps - it would cause problems but that's better than undermining the whole NHS by paying over the odds - a real incentive to leave.

I remember years ago when I went for a hospital appointment the senior nurse said he was on holiday for the next fortnight. When I asked where and said I'd be sorry not to see him the following week he said he was also working for an Agency and would be covering his own job for a fortnight, not having a break.

My bug bear working with agency nurses was, time wasted showing them how the ward was run, where everything was and on top of this, I came across a few who were quite frankly, slackers and of not much needed help. It was referred to on occasion in our profession as easy money as they earned much more than the permanent staff. Like all professions though, you will also find the bad along with the good.

About twenty years ago a nurse I knew, then aged about thirty, went to university and during that time also worked as an agency nurse to fund her degree.

Because she had good specialist experience as an intensive care paediatric nurse she was able to do agency work for £90 per hour - £900 for a ten hour shift.

This was twenty years ago - so what are specialist agency nurses paid now?

Baggs

sandelf

Agree with Wyllow3 and LizzieDrip. 'Nurse' covers such a range of work - and specialist knowledge or not, that talking about 'pay for nurses' in the round is a bit shallow. So I don't support strikes - and I don't support agency hiring either. If NHS abandoned using agency staff they would have to have 'in house' systems to cover unforeseeable gaps - it would cause problems but that's better than undermining the whole NHS by paying over the odds - a real incentive to leave.

This is a good point about NHS administrators (or whatever the hirers of agency staff are called) paying over the odds instead of there being in house training systems for, say, A-level school leavers to learn on the job, starting doing the more menial tasks and gradually becoming well qualified nurses.

There are bound to be other problems associated with employing agency workers as well as the outlay of more money than would be needed for in-team staff.

On another point – about comparing nurses' pay to that of people who get paid by the hour – professions like teaching and nursing have never been paid by the hour. The pay is an annual salary and you are meant to do whatever it takes to do the job properly. And that of course can and does often end in burn-out.

The hiring of agency nursing staff is done by senior nurses on behalf of the wards, theatres etc. Baggs, not by administrators. The theory is that as they manage the budgets the shift cover is optimised. However when there just aren’t enough staff to go round they have no choice.
The determination of nurse planning is done at national level though, so if there is insufficient government funding the number of places required are not available - there’s no control at local level.

Farzanah

^nobody pays for parking in Wales^.
Problem is if you are living in a border county you may have to go to English hospital for treatment. My local hospital sold off its car park to a private company whose charges are high.

True, but in fairness hospitals in England aren’t controlled by the Welsh Government so there’s nothing they can do about that - presumably the same applies to Scottish residents using English hospitals. I don’t think anybody should ever have to pay for parking at a hospital provided they have a legitimate reason to be there.

I don’t think anybody should ever have to pay for parking at a hospital provided they have a legitimate reason to be there.

👏👏👏

As I have said before, the problem is retention and recruitment. Those of you who state firmly that you do not support the strike need to realise that until nursing (and other allied professions) are paid a wage that recognises their skills and responsibilities, the time will come that they aren’t there any longer,

I am aware that I was extremely lucky when I was nursing in that I earned enough to pay my mortgage and bring up my daughter, as a single parent. When I retired I was one of the last to get a pension based on my final salary and a good pension too. Pensions are no longer calculated that way. Those less senior than I was did not fare so well, but, I understand that they still got better pensions than those retiring now.

100% behind the nurses…and other public service workers who are prepared to stand up for their sector. Their clients’ eg patients and pupils, are getting a raw deal too from underfunded services and overworked and under appreciated staff.

Casdon

GrannyRose15

Lower paid staff get less than a shelf stacker in tescos but yet have so much responsibility."

This is simply not true.

Starting salary for nurses is £27055

Shelf stackers in Tesco's get paid £10 per hour equating to a maximum of £20800. With far less generous benefits.

Pedalling mis-information doesn't help the argument.

£20,270 is the starting salary for a healthcare support worker aka auxiliary nurse GrannyRose15. So yes, they do get paid less than shelf stackers in Tesco - and of course carry a lot more responsibility.

I thought we were talking about nurses.