Nurses striking

[I_Like_Tractors]

I sat in a board meeting once in a large hospital whilst they discussed whether they could make parking free and decided they couldn't afford to lose the revenue. I suppose once you have had it coming in it's too much to lose.

 

[Former_Antelopee]

There we go... Not a nurses salary then
Comparing this with the bus strikes that are going on locally to me at the minute. Theyve just turned down 14% which would have only bought an experienced driver to 33k. I swear nurses live on another planet.

I always have thought this! When I first qualified after uni in my job I was on 18k and looked into aldi as it would’ve been better pay. I then got a pay rise to 21k and it wasn’t then worth going to aldi as it was the same (or very similar) pay.

 

[bourb0nbiscuits]

Could be a nursing associate. Often get mistaken for nurses but they aren’t

I thinknursing associates have a pin too , so should be on the register

 

[onservantannie]

Isn’t that contradictory, if we don’t do what they want they’ll leave and there’ll be no nurses or paramedics. Yet according to the comments I’ve seen there’s already no nurses or paramedics, so what difference does it make?

100% this! I really couldn’t agree more.

 

[I_Like_Tractors]

I think it’s a case of don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Anyone who expects a Tory government to give an above inflation pay rise is a fool. That’s not the way that they operate.
The detail hasn’t been revealed, but it would be quite controversial to make the lump sum tax free. The private sector pay tax on their bonuses as has already been said.
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As a public sector worker who was also on strike yesterday, members of my union were subjected to comments like this. We worked through the pandemic too but aren’t referred to as ‘angels’. We didn’t get free food or discounts. I’m sure that a charity or Foodbank would gladly accept the donations if NHS staff don’t want the money.
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Wow that's awful! You'll always get the worst in the internet though and these people would never say it directly to the people on the picket line. It's the same with some of the comments on here which suggests there is animosity against all strikers in general by some.

I support everyone trying to get a better wage for themselves especially with how everything is rising in cost and wages are not (and haven't for some time)

Oh and I'm not an angel, I'm one of the ones who get the vitriol, the dreaded "management"
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I’m not following
So every month I have approx £900 deducted from NI , tax , pension , student loan
However when we got the back dated pay one year and a lump sum , it put me into the next pension bracket so I had more deducted from me that money so instead of walking away with say 2.7k a month , I walked away with 2.1k amonth

it wasn’t just me ,there was all uproar all over the Facebook group for our trust , there was sooo many people who walked away with less because of the pension bracket and also pension arrears

This actually happened to me earlier this year with the other small payrise we were given, it pushed me into a higher tier for everything and so I had about £100 less a month in my pay packet (and for some reason the NHS had a system of taking the same amount per band for your pension whether you worked 5 or 35 hours a week, so it was even worse for some, they've changed that now!)

 

[Polythene Pam]

The nurses have said they'll stop the strikes if the Welsh offer is matched. I believe that would be 7% in total. Do those that don't support the strikes think that's too much?

 

[Tui]

nurses work nights which I imagine Aldi workers don’t?

 

[popb1tch]

The only way these could come back is with stringent check which would rule out a lot of people. This was part of the cause of the 2008 crash as they over lended to people.


I disagree, I am 9 years out of uni and I don't know many people my age who earn more than this and they are not in the NHS. You do not go into nursing thinking it is going to make you a fortune.

While I agree with it's hard if live in an expensive area or have kids but sorry there are options, someone on £33,000 even as a single person isn't doing too badly and this is what is getting the publics backs up. On £16-18,000 then yes but not over £30k.

That’s because wages have stagnated
People of all working groups should demand and expect for for their valuable time
£30k was a reasonable salary when I graduated 20 years ago…it certainly isn’t now

 

[instasham13]

What’s the latest with the strike action now?

Where? England, Scotland or Wales?

 

[Blond3g1rl]

Tbh if that’s considered a pay cut a lot of the UK are getting a pay cut too

Personally im not interested in the lump sum, everytime i get a lump sum, it pushes me into the next pension brackets so I come away with less pay than what i would normally get

If you want a very good pension then you have to be prepared to pay for it

 

[Piff paff puff]

Almost half of the people working in the nhs aren't in a medical role but execs.
December is the month Nurses take their holidays. Nhs Xmas crisis anyone?!
Nhs is a devolved business, the nhs bosses run it according to their own rules. So they're admitting they haven't been able to run a business for the past few decades so why haven't they done anything to fix it?
The Conservative gov have given them more money than any other party. What's happened to the billions we keep giving them? Where can we see a breakdown of what it was spent on. (BTW I think all political parties are corrupt and wouldn't vote any of them)
The real nurses are not on strike only a handful of union puppets who will pipe up ad infinitum every year with ever more demands getting more ridiculous every time.
If the NHS stopped wasting money it would easily pay for the rises anyway otherwise a pay rise will come from the British public who are the ones being constantly shit on.

 

[onservantannie]

Nobody gives one

Maybe not. But nurses still aren’t getting their 19%.

 

[gigilouxx]

I agree that you need a certain amount of maths knowledge such as for medications etc....but I'm getting ready to sit an exam full of algebra and stuff its ridiculous. I'd gotten places at 4/4 of the unis I applied for but I couldn't get onto any of them as they absolutely would not take me without that C/4/level 2 in maths.

That’s what put my sister off nursing a few years back, she’s no maths GCSE and hasn’t got the option of doing a year GCSE in a college as she’s got kids and works shifts. It’s fuckin ludicrous

But a massive good luck for your exam, you got this x

 

[OnlyHereForTheLolz]

Nope actually due to my personal health circumstances i was shielded. Just sticking up for my colleagues. I maintain that you don’t know what it’s like. I imagine your company provided you with proper PPE if you went into a hospital?

I didn't go into hospitals and in fact the beginning we couldn't have any PPE because it was all reserved for hospital staff. It was a bit of a shit show tbh. I think people forget what the beginning was like.
But anyway I don't want to derail the thread with Covid talk. Think I've had enough of that during the bloody pandemic

 

[Avenged7Fold]

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and it’s not really something google can provide answers for.

Out of curiosity, would an alternative model of privatisation really be that bad? For example, making NI an optional amount of tax in which not paying revokes your right to use to NHS, but also making it a legal requirement to have health insurance in the event that you do choose to not pay it? Would this not free up core resources within the NHS for people who have no alternative than to use it?

Arguably many people’s jobs would incentive employment through offering health insurance which may also have an effect of increased employment?

There’s the obvious issue of what about those who don’t currently pay NI or those who cannot afford private healthcare, but surely this is something that could be subsidied in some way? I’m aware that the nature of our NI as it stands is there to somewhat subsidise the availability of the NHS to those on lower incomes, but could this not be taken out of a different tax? This is the part I struggle trying to think of a solution to.

Could a new model where we optionally pay NI also be used to subsidise those on lower incomes? In a very simplistic model:

E.g. Pay £200 a month to the government in which you’re matched with an insurance company, and X amount is taken to subsidise those on lower incomes, in line with however they do this now?

Or

Pay for your health insurance of your chosen company (or your work pays) and then an additional small amount of tax to the government to help them subsidise keeping parts of the NHS open to lower income people or to provide them their own health insurance

—————————————————————

Not looking for an argument, genuinely curious

I’ve thought about this loads.
Labour definitely don’t want what they call a two tier system, but we’ve already got one. Those who can afford it or have a work health scheme use companies like BUPA for their healthcare.
I’d happily pay NI to keep the NHS afloat and my own private healthcare if I could afford it.

 

[gigilouxx]

1. like I said, the higher the ask the more leverage they have, more room for negotiation. Since most of the public sector has barely had rises in line with inflation for the best part of a decade, im not sure why this would be considered “too high” really.
2. People using food banks has nothing to do with nurses striking though. People going to food banks and lower earners aren’t being asked to take a cut to pay nurses. The RCN are basically asking the government to tax the wealthy and stop hoarding wealth at the top (and don’t buy the rhetoric,there is most definitely a lot of wealth being hoarded)
3. I would disagree that they’ll lose public goodwill. They are striking alongside a lot of other unions. Nurses in general as a profession enjoy (consistent) good will. When you’ve got XYZ unions striking it looks less and less like a union problem and more and more like a government one, so they are really in a pretty strong position in leveraging public opinion. Though, although I’m sure public opinion is something they’d like, the court of public opinion isn’t sitting in on these negotiations.



then we should expect/encourage/support them to also strike, not demand that nurses as a profession lower and accept the shitty standards?!

Prison officers are banned from striking, alongside the police and a few others I believe

 

[Merpedy]

Striking nurses don’t deserve a bumper pay rise

Today’s nurses strike may be the biggest action – or inaction – of its kind in NHS history. But there is a distinct sense of having been here before.

www.spectator.co.uk

I feel like this article touches upon the points that people are trying to make but get dismissed about because “it’s a strike for nurses”. Though there’s a focus on care workers and I’d think the response would be the same on that part

 

[JoeBloggs]

That is an absolute disgrace. This "stay home, save lives " mantra has worked out rather cushy for some.

Like this GP…https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/28/gp-working-home-250-miles-away-surgery/

 

[Emsie]

Do nurses get London weighting? If not then they definitely should.
£2,200 in London would be eaten by rent and childcare but I'm assuming that not all nurses are single and therefore there is another income knocking about.

 

[Tui]

I'm not trying to be obtuse, but why are theses exempt ones striking? you can't leave someone in a coma with no nurse. thats ridiculous. you can't force cancer patients to have their treatments delayed. you can't say "I know your grans having a heart attack, but she'll just have to wait for a few days, we're on strike".

I will always support strikes and striking, but there is a limit. I care for people with advanced dementia, and whilst my job is exhausting and underpaid, no staff member there would strike because all hell would break loose.

I expect they will have support staff for high risk areas. I worked during a nursing strike in another country and the union had nominated members who were allocated to certain areas for critical service delivery like giving drugs etc. Those staff were still technically participating in strike action as they were coordinated by the union but their role was to protect critical service delivery and that’s all I.e we couldn’t expect them to do anything more than what they were placed there to do.