NHS: Health Workers Put a Number on Pay Claim

More than a million health workers say they have had enough and have written directly to Chancellor Philip Hammond putting the case for a wage rise of 3.9% plus an £800 bonus.

The 14 unions, including the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and Royal College of Midwives (RCM), broke with the traditional process of pay claims by using their joint letter to go directly to the man who holds the purse strings and asking him to loosen them.

By side-stepping the normal methods of asking for the pay-rise the unions representing most NHS staff, from nurses to cleaners and virtually all jobs in between, have increased the political pressure on Prime Minister Theresa May. Their move comes within days of a deal for police and prison officers which was the first chink in the seven-year-old pay restraint which was introduced under the Cameron-Clegg Government.

The unions signing the letter included Unison, the largest public sector union. In a statement to Felix Magazine, Sara Gorton, the head of the union’s health section, said that health workers had gone without a “proper pay rise for too long.”

“Their wages continue to fall behind inflation as food and fuel bills, housing and transport costs rise,” she said. “NHS staff and their families need a pay award that stops the rot and starts to restore some of the earnings that have been missed out on.”

“A decent pay rise will make it easier for struggling hospital trusts to attract new recruits and hold onto experienced staff. Continuing with the pay cap will further damage services, and that affects us all. The Government must give the NHS the cash it needs so its entire workforce gets a decent rise, without the need for more services to be cut.

“There must be no selective lifting of the cap, as with police and prison officers a few days ago. All public servants, no matter where in the country they live or what job they do, deserve a proper pay rise.”

Janet Davies, the chief executive of the RCN, said that if the Government gave nurses the same deal as the police – 1% plus a 1% one-off bonus — it would still be a real-terms pay cut.

“Nursing workers must be given a pay rise that matches inflation, with an additional consolidated lump sum that begins to make up for the years of lost pay,” she said.
“When the next pay review body process begins, the Government must allow it to be truly independent and able to recommend a meaningful increase that helps hardworking staff with the cost of living.”

“It must be fully funded and not force the NHS to cut services or jobs to pay for it. When ministers hold pay down, it drives too many nurses out of the NHS. The RCN will submit further evidence on motivation, morale, recruitment and retention issues for nursing staff.”

The unions’ joint demand came at the end of a torrid week for May and Hammond over public sector pay, which played a key role in the recent general election campaign and Labour’s surge in popularity under Jeremy Corbyn.

May was forced to abandon the 1% cap on Tuesday in a symbolic rejection of austerity. The police will receive an extra 2% next year while prison officers will get 1.7%, though funding must come from within existing budgets.

The critical nature of May’s dilemma over the pay cap reached tipping point when Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist MPs, who are keeping the minority Conservative Government  in power, backed a Labour motion in the House of Commons  calling on ministers to “end the public sector pay cap in the NHS and give NHS workers a fair pay rise”.

 

by Bob Graham

 

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