FFS... Give the Nurses a Decent Pay Rise

Good article from the BBC on nurses pay levels.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/63587909

The government says that figure increased to £35,600 by March 2022, and that nurses were then given a £1,400 increase, which should take the average up to £37,000.

Is that above the average salary?
That depends on which average you're talking about.
The mean UK full-time salary, which is what you get if you add up the amount all full-time employees are paid and divide by the number of full-time employees, is £39,966, according to the figures for April 2022 from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
But from the same report, the median, which is the amount that half of full time employees will be earning more than, and half will be earning less than, is £33,000.
So the average figure for nurses is higher than the median salary but lower than the mean.

I agree with you about Dr. and his contributions to this forum.
His opinion on the usefulness or not for the NHS I do not agree with.
I rarely use or have had to use the NHS but am delighted it is there for all of those who need it.

So figuratively everything in life has a value when compared with other areas of our lives and depends on where you place the most value.

Nurses average pay is £37,000 which is 12% higher than half of all other full time employees earn if taking the median (the other figure is distorted by including the rich).

So the first question is do you value you nurses and their job roles / qualifications / contributions to society as 12% higher or more or less than that compared to your average working person?

The second question regarding food banks. Are more than half the working population who have less average income using food banks like the nurses?

The first question is a matter of opinion. The answer to the second question is probably no.

There are two market forces at play here. Firstly, supply and demand. This is the biggest factor in the jobs market for any career however the pay is still a variable in the private sector based on profit made from each profession. If you make x profit on average by employing somebody in one profession and 10x profit employing somebody in another then the latter employees profession will obviously command higher wages for the same supply and demand level.

Now on to public sector, none profit related unless you can accurately calculate the effects of keeping people well enough to work to keep on making profits. There has to be a value in this obviously though how do you calculate that it is pretty impossible.

So, we need to compare how much value we place on nurses and their roles with other professions.
Are they more valuable than so,ebody who serves lattes in a coffee shop. Most would say yes.
Are they more valuable than an office worker who is at a company making boiler parts. Most would say yes as though lets say they earn the same, the public would say profit is not affecting peoples lives like the nurses are so the nurses deserve more.
Are they more valuable than a technologist who is helping increase the average persons lifespan through complex design and development of items that impact everyones lives including those of the nurses, for me no though I don’t know if the public would agree with me.

Role-swapping, could a nurse learn the level of complexity to replace a technologist in his role, probably not.
Could a technologist learn the level of complexity and caring to replace a nurse in their role, more likely than the other way around i would say as complexity wont be a problem.

Role swapping has to be considered when placing a value on wages imo. It brings into focus how difficult a role is and how an individual can have qualities that someone from another profession is unlikely to be able to do if put in that position.

Ok can anyone pick up the role-swapping comparison of nurses with other professions then the average wages of each can be compared to see if we think nurses should be on more or less than 12% higher than half the working poulation?

Dentist
Solicitor
Electronic engineer
Mechanical engineer
Waiter
Web designer
Software developer
Receptionist
Optician
Electrician
Plumber
Bricklayer
Fireman
Secondary school teacher
Primary school teacher
University teacher
Salesman medical parts
Pharmacist
Truck driver

Dentist £51,000
Solicitor £62,000 (2018)
Electronic engineer £42,860 (2022)
Mechanical engineer £39,221

University lecturer £45,187

If you can find more accurate figures then tweak below or add other professions with the median average salary -

Median wages:
Dentist £51,000
Solicitor £62,000 (2018)
Electronic engineer £42,860 (2022)
Mechanical engineer £39,221
Waiter £23,000
Web designer £31,000
Software developer £49,084
Receptionist £22,000
Optician £52,009
Electrician £37,698
Plumber £36,174
Bricklayer £38,707
Fireman £36,000
Secondary school teacher £37,000
Primary school teacher £34,500
University lecturer £45,187
Salesman medical parts £37,000
Pharmacist £47,000
Truck driver £33,000

Could a nurse job swap with any profession that has a median salary higher than their £37,000 ?

You need to factor in whether they would have what it takes to train for the role to do it of course

Are these professions on less than them using food banks like nurses?

Waiter, web designer, plumber, receptionist, fireman, secondary/primary school teachers, truck drivers?

These are not in any way reasonable comparisons, eric. A self employed plumber for example doesn't get a gold plated pension, amazing sick benefits, access to early retirement, guaranteed lifetime income, regular diversity classes etc.

To give an absurd suggestion like nurses have no option to use food banks in order to eat lends credibility to it. If someone tried to claim that the earth is flat, you wouldn't try to disprove it with evidence, you'd just laugh at their stupidity, and anyone gullible enough to believe those making the claim.

cryoftruth • December 24, 2022 8:19 PM GMT
A while ago I heard a stat that 90% of prescriptions are handouts. That's all you need to know.

Yes but anyone can hear any such odious and stupid idiotic tripe and bilge like that by standing next to a toilet near a cheap Indian Restaurant.

99% of prescriptions are to treat an illness, I heard that a while ago.

And from a GP rather than some nutjob**** on a betting forum.

And of course Prescriptions are free in Scotland.

Unlucky, bro

What percentage of prescriptions are paid for in England?
This means, according to a Government answer to an oral Parliamentary Question in October 2019, around 89% of NHS prescription items are dispensed in the community free of charge.17 Aug 2022

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/constituency-casework-nhs-prescription-charges-in-england/

Yes just trying to quantify how you decide on their value in terms of wages. It is difficult.

In the end salaries come down to supply and demand and the capabilities of individuals to perform a job of a given value to mankind.
This can only be decided by capabilities for certain roles no matter what the supply and demand is. For example many jobs including that of a nurse could not job swap with a skilled engineer however a skilled engineer is likely to be able to perform the role of a nurse if trained. The value to mankind of both is similar imo though that is a personal view. Therefore a an average pay skilled engineer should always be paid more than an average pay nurse. It comes down to this last paragraph to me.

Yes you are right about public sector pensions they are indeed like gold dust and I didn’t take that into account. Also the private sector so much sick leave and you would be ‘persuaded to leave’ and generally have far less job security / periods out of work.

The public arent generally given valid information these days due to political motivations of organisations. I didn’t expect an honest article from the BBC like the one posted.

If you have the figures we can all debate it.

To be honest it highlights to me how poorly paid engineers are compared to nurses and if I was a young kid I would be debating becoming a nurse with the benefits of a government job and the complexity of being an engineer taken into account.

and sacrice the extra couple of grand wages.

My general point is that it's a rabbit hole. There are so many factors that determine the career path that people take. Any also what they spend, basis living expenses. A nurse living in Surrey has far higher living expenses that one living in Durham for example, and that goes for any job.

The individual needs to make their own choices. I was slightly flippant about it before, but if your job is not paying enough for you to have the lifestyle that you feel you need, get a different job.

However if you were going to do a detailed analysis, you would have too dig deep in the unique way that public sector remuneration is structured. My understanding is that nurses enjoy incremental pay, and also lucrative enhancement based on 'OT' and 'out of hours'. For example they get a big step up in pay after two years, in addition to the general uplift across the grades. They will earn more than the reported figures. It's a bit like a sales person who has a flat salary but earn far more in actuality due to commission.

‘The NHS Pension Scheme employer contribution rate increased on 1 April 2019 from 14.3% to 20.6%, plus the employer levy of 0.08%.’

That’s £7,622 government pension contribution on top of the £37,000 nurse salary which is £44,622 pay and benefits (and generous sick leave / great job security)

Most private pensions the company will contribute around 4 or 5% in my experience across around 18 companies.

So an Electronic Engineer on £42,860 will get company pension contribution of £2,143 which in total is £45, 003 pay and benefits - about the same as a nurse (limited sick leave / good job security).

To me that is outrageously bad for extremely intelligent people who become engineers. They need to debate whether they really want to use their brains as much.

The pay 'award' based on fy 2022, beginning April 2022 was announced many months ago, July I think. It gets backdated to April. So why have the unions waited six months to lobby for strike action. It's apparent to anyone with a functioning brain.

If they decide they want an easier time intellectually then the people creating engineering concepts and equipment that improve and extend our lives will become less and our lives be far worse. We are all going to die and need assistance doing that (nurses) but do we want to have the chance to live longer in future (engineers)?

I would be surprised if most people wouldn’t say the latter is most important. If that’s the case engineers should have benefits exceeding those of nurses.

If the government was shrewd about it (we know that they aren't) they would offer the unions an exchange. Exchange some of the extraordinarily lucrative NHS pension benefits for salary today, instead. Or at least put that option on the table for any nurse.

So what do you think about the comparative benefits of nurses and engineers I put figures on above?

A lot of the guys I know who went into engineering were getting A’s for their A levels and I doubt they would have expected the people in their class who became nurses to be getting the same income as them in future years.

To me all of this just highlights the fact that if you look down your street and see the people living in the same value house as you and what they do for a living and their ability at school then you will realise we all get about the same in the end unless we go self employed.

There is no advantage being very intelligent in the Uk so deal with it. If you have any sense dont be hard on yourself in those exams growing up and just take what comes easiest for you.

Of course mankind will suffer if young very intelligent people knew the real score at an early age and acted on it.

I don't feel that they can be legitimately compared.

The whole narrative is manufactured in my view, a small number of self appointed activists and union leaders are getting all of the attention (supported by the usual suspects in mainstream media), but I don't feel the majority of nurses would support this extreme action in private. They will be far more disappointed with how the NHS is mismanaged, and leadership incompetence.

We have to compare them somehow or how do you decide reward levels?

Why do they need to be compared? Comparing roles within the same public sector organisation is legitimate. There will be a big imbalance between those delivering tangible services to external stakeholders, and those doing internal, non productive functions. I can be confident that the imbalance is evident across the public sector.

A general rule of thumb, if someone takes two weeks annual leave, and nobody needs to pick up the slack whilst they are absent, that is more than likely a luxury function they are employed to do. The NHS and other public sector areas should not have luxury functions. But the opposite is true, they are overburdened with them.

There are 321,624 Registered Nurses working in the NHS according to the most recent NHS data (March 2022, figures include Health Visitors). At the same point in 2021 there were 311,137 Registered Nurses and Health Visitors working in the NHS.

There is no advantage being very intelligent in the Uk so deal with it.

Perhaps your yardstick for measuring intelligence is wrong?

Perhaps it isnt?

Obviously you are going to explain the financial rewards of being an engineer over a nurse?

Perhaps you can explain how doing complex demanding work for a living, and getting less rewards than for nursing is a reliable measure of intelligence?

lapsy pa
24 Dec 22 21:20

''He isn't, he praised Sunak to high heaven for his interaction with the homeless person today,he is an id iot.''

You read that completely wrong. I mean, pointing out that Sunak asked a homeless person if he's businessman should not be anyone's idea of a compliment.

Intelligence is another rabbit hole. There are plenty of intelligent people who aren't high earners, and plenty of thick people who are. Salary is more a measure of the environment you were raised in, access to nepotism, ambition and sometimes dedication and work ethic. Nowadays you can add to that, a fashionable immutable characteristic.

Most people, and you can count me in that bracket, value quality of life over ambition.

As is so often the case since the cult of woke took over the world, these things are way overanalysed and overthought. If you want to be a nurse, be a nurse. If you don't, quit and get another job. It isn't any more complex than that. As the actual data shows, we're not short of people who want to be nurses.

Jesuss, Eric had several pints of Assumptions last night didn't he

value quality of life over ambition.

The same applies to schooling Cider, the swat will gain higher qualifications than the kid who prefers to play football every spare minute he's got on his hands.
But both will be judged on the qualifications they gain as a measure of their intelligence.

You also have to sell out your morals and sell your soul to climb the corporate ladder in most cases. Ability to do the job is a distant second to politicking and manipulation. The people who genuinely care get left behind. I can't imagine the nhs is much different.

The comparison between different jobs and salaries
is only an issue because the nhs eg is a nationalised
health care system - which means individuals don’t pay the salaries ,
governments do . If you paid for your own health care privately
then the market place determines salaries .

Crisis – what crisis?

Nursing is a shortage occupation: the current nurse vacancy rate in England is 9.4 per cent, and there are geographies and sectors that have even worse problems. In London, the RCN puts the vacancy rate at 17 per cent and one London mental health trust recorded an overall nurse vacancy rate of 30 per cent. In community settings there are vacancy levels of over 21 per cent for district nurses and 46 per cent for children’s nurses, which is worrying at a time when policy is encouraging a shift to community-based care. There are also pressing gaps in the nursing workforce within social care, gaps often neglected by NHS workforce planners.

New trainees are failing to compensate for the 'hole in the leaking bucket'. More nurses are leaving the profession than joining it. In 2014, there were 13,400 graduates from nursing school while 7,500 nurses retired, but most worryingly 17,800 nurses left before retirement. The gap was largely filled by nurses recruited from abroad and an increase in use of agency staff. It is a position that could be exacerbated by Brexit, an anticipated bulge in retirement (triggered by changes to pension rules), the continuing constraints on pay and staff carrying increasing workloads.

We have an urgent and growing problem in the supply of the nursing workforce. It is a problem that is threatening the quality of patient care and the ability to transform the current model of care.

What are the solutions?

Pay

The current median pay for nurses is £31,500, which is £7,500 below the median in other graduate occupations. When there was a severe nurse shortage in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Pay Review Body responded with substantial real pay increases. According to the Migration Advisory Committee review of the nursing workforce, “available pay flexibility is insufficiently used”. Possible adjustments include recruitment and retention premia and greater local pay flexibility. The current financial situation suggests that increases in pay are off the table. However, the costs of recruitment and the high spend on agency staff demonstrate that there is a strengthening business case for pay adjustments in some areas.



The market place is screaming out PAY NURSES MORE.

Nurses are already well paid for the work they do.

In a large organisation job vacancies are popping up all the time. A ready supply of people waiting to fill those jobs isn't feasible. A job in Manchester can't be filled by someone who's out of work in London.

But there is a ready supply of labour from abroad if you choose to go down that path, and without having going to the expense of training that staff. There are agencies set up to import these kinds of people.

It's easy to see why so many NHS staff were born abroad.

It would be madness to pay them more when they’re so willing to come here anyway.

The word is complex

LOL @ Dr C

If already trained nurses from abroad are queuing up to come and work in the NHS why are there tens of thousands of vacancies

Are all Tory voters such cretins?

You really have no clue do you.

A workforce of 1.5 million will permanently have tens of thousands of vacancies. Every month you'll get thousands of leavers, and they have to be replaced. It's called turnover.

If I'm a cretin, Noblet, that still puts me a mile in front of you.

Therefore, even a semblance of logic dictates that you can only look at the number of employees to make judgements, not the number of vacancies.

You really have no clue do you.

A workforce of 1.5 million will permanently have tens of thousands of vacancies. Every month you'll get thousands of leavers, and they have to be replaced. It's called turnover.



Or churn. Do you know the monthly churn for NHS nurses? (on average)

People like Noblet, know so little.

Are you saying that nursing vacancies in the NHS are completely irrelevant?



NHS Digital statistics reveal there were almost 47,000 nursing vacancies in health and care settings in England in June 2022.

Obviously not, but since there will always be thousands of vacancies, and there has been a drive to recruit nurses over the last few years, there will be a lot.

The only relevancy is the number employed. If you looked at the monthly variation over a time period, say five years, that may produce some useful information. A snapshot with no context means nothing.

The government threatened to enforce vaccination over that period as well. I'm not surprised that some off them who had the option of retiring told them they can fook it, and took the retirement option.

So there being 47000 vacancies is relevant?


Only where I worked the turnover was directly related to the sh!ttiness of the job and the remuneration.

The sh!ttiness of the job and the remuneration also hampered all efforts to replace staff who left.

So 47,000 vacancies would appear to say the pay and conditions are sh!tty.

Oh it's all to do with vaccinations

Any figures you'd like to share?

I already told you, it needs context.

What has it been each month over the last, say, decade.

I'm not even sure that would be much use, given all the nonsense over the last three years with lockdown and nutty health policies. But as a minimum, the number needs context.

The only figures you need to know is that the number of nurses employed is increasing, not reducing.

So the number of vacancies is irrelevant again?

Yes. I know you're struggling with the concept. An organisation that has close to 2 million roles to fill will always have tens of thousands of vacancies.

There's around 35 million jobs in the UK. That means the NHS employs between 4-5% of the total number of jobs in the UK.

So, can be expected to have between 4-5% of the vacancies at any time.

Which is.

A lot.

There aren't close to 2 million nurses.

You are right I am struggling with your logic that says 47,000 nursing vacancies is not down to pay and conditions. My 40 odd years in industry tells me that pay is the number 1 factor to recruitment, Conditions being number 2.

In your '40 odd years in industry' did you wait for people to leave before advertising the role to replace them ?

I was way ahead of my time tbf, if someone gave me their four week notice I asked the talent people to begin advertising the role (before they left).

If the NHS have that level of advanced planning, there will always be thousands of vacancies.

¿Comprendes

No.

We knew the churn rate for our skilled staff and we recruited people and trained them so we were never short of vital skills because we had customers who would go elsewhere if we couldn't help them.

We cared deeply about our customers, they paid our wages.

So you recruited new people before you had unfulfilled roles? That will catch on.

Possibly it's sinking in, this is progress. If the numerous trusts are advertising for 47K nurses in total, it doesn't mean they are 47K nurses short of what they need to cover the essential duties.

I've not even touched on maternity leave. Which will be huge in the world of nursing, for obvious reasons. They probably get up to a year off to have baby.

We had to. Running the business short of staff would have led to safety issues. Left us open to legal action in the event of accidents.

No surprise the NHS currently pays about £2.5bn a year in negligence claims. Maybe if they didn't run so short of staff that figure might come down.

Under the NHS scheme, you're entitled to 8 weeks of full pay (less SMP/MA) and 18 weeks of half pay (less SMP/MA), then a further 13 weeks of SMP or MA, leaving 13 weeks of unpaid maternity leave if you wish to take the full 52 weeks of maternity leave.

yup

I've not even touched on maternity leave. Which will be huge in the world of nursing, for obvious reasons. They probably get up to a year off to have baby.


FFS what is the point of employing managers if they can't plan for maternity leave in a woman heavy industry.


Stop inventing excuses for the 47,000 nurses vacancies.

Excuses

Trying to educate you, and evidently failing. You nearly got there for a nanosecond.

You are trying to educate me


Any business will be planning to cope with staff chur, pregnancies, promotions, training, sabbaticals, sickness etc etc.

If a business can't recruit the staff it knows it needs to recruit then it can't be offering a good employment package.


You can invent as much BS as you want but the above always stays true,

And the planning will include recruitment. On the numbers that NHS employs, lots and lots of recruitment.

No need to increase pay , it’s an attractive job re pay and conditions
Merely need to broaden the potential pool of recruits .

They’re trying to employ and maintain a pool of people
who are obviously not suited to the task
Let them go .

Liverpool is missing its idiot.

And the planning will include recruitment. On the numbers that NHS employs, lots and lots of recruitment.



If a business can't recruit the staff it knows it needs to recruit then it can't be offering a good employment package.

Not focusing on replacing any nurse that leaves
If they do so there will be potentially tens - or hundreds
of new nursing candidates who will replace them

* for every vacancy

Nurses get plenty already. So why give them more?

Same as the doctors, the more we give them the earlier they retire.

Nurses get plenty already. So why give them more?



If a business can't recruit the staff it knows it needs to recruit then it can't be offering a good enough employment package.

The more they get paid, the more it attracts, and they end up doing even less than they do now.
Plus they take more time off and retire earlier.

Stop paying them when they're not at work, and they'll only take time off when they're ill.
Now that is a good idea.

So making their terms and conditions worse will help fill the 47,000 nursing vacancies

If there is a shortage of nurses, which I doubt, it's got nothing to do with their wages.

I've already explained how the system works. And once that has been grasped we can see the nurses haven't got a leg to stand on over wage claims.

All the trouble with nursing is being caused by left-wing agitators. And Noblet is a good example of that.

Noblet, you're nothing but a trouble maker.

Well i agree left-wing agitators are causing current problems with strikes. That is strikes for you.

It will soon be different as lack of consumer protection due to corporate greed with uncontrolled price rises will lead to real anger. The French would already be rioting on this.

How/why is there a nurses shortage?

must be fake news as Bojo promised an extra 50,000 nurses last year, or was that just tory BS?

Tories always try to blame left wing agitators or Union bosses for strikes conveniently forgetting the UK has the toughest hurdles to cross in organising a legal strike.


A trade union can only call for industrial action if a majority of its members involved support it in a properly organised postal vote - called a ‘ballot’.

Dec 26, 2022 -- 3:48PM, Escapee wrote:

How/why is there a nurses shortage?must be fake news as Bojo promised an extra 50,000 nurses last year, or was that just tory BS?

I know liberalists struggle with maths, but I believe the commitment was 50K extra in the parliament of five years. The numbers went up by 10K in the most recent year.

If the nurses were so upset on the award for FY23, why did they wait six months until Xmas to try and arrange strikes...

FYI strike action is the last resort. HTH.

Apparently. What was the first resort?

I imagine the first resort after complaints by the members would be a letter from the union explaining why they felt the pay award wasn't sufficient.

Do you have evidence of this, or just guessing? Letter to whom?

LOL


Go get a brain.

LOL


Go get a brain.

Pay peanuts
Get monkeys

strike
school teachers say erosion of services for children and families has made their jobs untenable
relentless reduction” of other public services supposed to be helping children and their families.
I no longer want to work for a government that is so out of touch with reality and treats my profession and our children with such contempt
System working fine send more jabs