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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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 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.

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 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.

In what way irrelevant?

I stayed in a public service role despite earning less than colleagues who set up privately. Partly because I’m unhappy about profit making from safeguarding, partly because I knew the pension scheme was good.
Now that’s no longer the case, I understand why people leave public service

growstuff

Private and public sector wage growth 2010-2017:

www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/ispayhigherinthepublicorprivatesector/2017-11-16

Very interesting! But largely irrelevant to the current argument.

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.

A vocation yes but taken total advantage off yes! Soa y do extra hours because of staff shortage. Way behind on payrises compared to politicians and the rest at the top. Nurses using food banks shouldnt be a thing. Infact anyone using one. Lower paid staff get less than a shelf stacker in tescos but yet have so much responsibility. Claps don't pay bills. Nhs staff are not even protected anymore of they catch covid. Yet still have to work with active covid patients. Where is the fairness in that. They get penalized for working with high risk patients if they catch the illness. The world Haas gone mad. So yes the nhs staff will strike. Not just registered nurses but non registered staff also. The government needs to step up and make a decent payrise happen without us being penalized for the next three years because we dare to challenge a system that's gone so wrong.

Not all ballots have closed yet. My trust’s ballot closes on 25th November. I think the majority of trusts are likely to vote to strike. I’m really worried how this will impact on patient care. I work for an ambulance service and we are struggling to deliver care whilst working normal hours plus overtime so goodness knows how bad it will get if strikes happen. It’s not just nursing staff that have voted to strike paramedics and other health professionals are likely to take industrial action too. What worrying and challenging times these are.

Just to clarify, all student nurses (and other NHS professional students) get bursaries paddyann54, not exclusively Scottish nurses. Nobody pays for parking in Wales either, government policy.
I do agree with the RCN Strategy of holding the line between the different countries of the UK, as there’s a danger of a settlement being reached in one that is exceeded by a jointly negotiated agreement on behalf of all nurses, which will cause dissatisfaction and staff movement, as has happened with the separately negotiated medical pay awards.

they should be called nurses imo

HCA’s are the equivalent of Nursing Auxiliaries in England PaddyAnne54

Nurses in Scotland have been offered a flat rate pay rise as (apparently) requested by the union who advised they accept ,
This offer meant a low of 5.4% and a high of 11% depending where on the payscale they sit .
Nurses in Scotland DONT pay for parking ..its free in Hospitals ,they get bursaries and dont have Uni fees to pay .
I hear from my neighbour who is a nurse practitioner that the RCN advised the offer was refused to keep the whole UK in line.
The Scottish government has funded 750 nurses from abroad to help with the shortage...not nearly enough as we all know
,but there is a shortage in a lot of countries.Maybe a nursing auxiliary system where no Uni education is needed would be the answer ? I remember auxiliaries from my stays in maternity when they did a lot of things nurses are doing now

ruthiek

I bet many people would do love that sort of pay along with the gold plated pension.
I think nurses should get a pay rise but why should they get more than others ?

Another ignoramus spouting rubbish 🙄

Considering we paid consultants £6000 per day and wasted £37 billion on track and trace, the government can find the money to pay their mates. Nurses are underpaid and should receive a significant pay increase. I fully support the strike.

Portmeanne

I was a nurse for 38 years .
I was very aware that I could have earned more in other professions - however I think that given the good pension + job security I was prepared to earn less.
Yes other professions have better salaries but do not have the good pensions + security. You can not have everything !
I am now retired on a good pension and my job was never at risk.

I do not support the strike - they will only make things ( staffing levels + waiting lists ) worse - and no guarantee of a better pay rise.

Except there are no nhs great pensions anymore🙄....any pension taken before state pension age will be greatly penalised.....so that you're actually saying is....
Its OK for nurses today to pay for your great pension out of their taxes and NI ..
which you were able to take at 55.... but they shouldn't strike .....shame on you ....this is a disgusting comment