Page 1 of Nurses = pay rise = Industrial action??

As we seem to have a diverse, yet interesting, cross section of people here I wondered what the general opinion would be on the following:

Us nurses have been shat on by the government yet again over our pay rise. Basically,
they have offered us a 1.5% payrise in April followed by a further 1% October. Now this split offer equats to a measley 1.9% yearly rise (also saves the governmnet £60 million so they are ok for their pay rises!)
The offer was refused and now the Nursing and Midwifery Council are calling for a ballot as to what the members, ie people like me, want to do next. They are asking do we want industrial action and if so in what form. We would be breaking our Code of Conduct if we were to strike but is it what we are going to have do for this country to take us seriously?

Would be interested to know what you guys thought
Juls

This item was edited on Sunday, 8th July 2007, 22:48

Our pay talks with the Government haven`t even finished yet, an offer is due to go to our Union within the next week (which I expect will be the first of a series of to`s and fro`s).

Bear in mind our glorious new PM is almost certainly still the one holding the purse strings...

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Hard one this. Part of me thinks, you chose the job because you wanted to help people get better and look after the sick and not for the money, you knew that the wages paid to nurses is crap and that seems to have always been the case. Yet on the other hand I think nurses should get paid more and be looked after by the government. I would like to think that nurses would not strike and put peoples life`s at risk. After all that would surely go against their nature.

So, yeah pay the nurses more but i don`t feel that the nurses should strike.

Can I sit on the fence please? :/

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Forms will be posted any time now as to whether the RCN should go ahead with a formal ballot as to choice of industrial action - lots of paperwork, tooing and froing but its sad its got to this stage :/ .
And seen as our `glorious new PM` cut millions form the NHS budget very quietly just before coming into power I wont spend my rise just yet!
Juls

Quote:
Can I sit on the fence pleaseAs long as I can join you there! I totally agree the money was not what brought me into nursing but do feel after the last 12 months especially, we deserve an average payrise. I do appreciate other professions have also been denied a good payrise before anyone thinks Im being selfish!
Juls

I hold the belief (maybe naively) that most nurses enter the profession more as a vocation than just `a job` . That being the case they should be extremely reluctant to withdraw their labour. It is quite wrong for society/government to abuse this by denying them reasonable remuneration.

I think the same applies for other key services such as the Police and Fire service. We expect these people to be available 24/7 and they should be reasonably paid.

I don`t know how you arrive at what is reasonable though.

This item was edited on Sunday, 8th July 2007, 23:39

A bloke in work is always going on about how his wife, who`s a nurse of some kind (midwife I think), got a payrise 2years ago and basically has still been paid the old salary for this whole time so are basically owed loads of backpay which they can`t get paid.

It`s scandalous really and like he says you wouldn`t accept it from any other organisation and they would be ripped to shreds in the courts but because it`s the NHS and the government it`s accepted.

The biggest load of bollocks about all this is National Insurance went up 1% a few years back with all money going to the NHS and there doesn`t seem to be any significant improvement.

Also Gordon Brown was supposedly a good chancellor as interest rates etc were low when he was in the job, but the matter of fact is he got in the job at the right time and within the first few years of the job managed to cut Britains debt quite considerably, but since then has borrowed masses more and we are in more debt than when Labour took power.

A shocking fact that I came across when I was doing a piece of coursework in Uni was that Britain actually spend more on interest payments on it`s debt than it does on the NHS. >:(



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I`m sitting squarely on the fence on this one (ow, picket fence). I think Nursing is stuck between the proverbial rock and other place along with the other professions which used to be considered vocations or callings - teachers, doctors, firemen, etc. when it comes to pay rises and the threat of strikes. If they don`t strike, they get walked all over, if they do strike they`re damned. Nursing is doubly cursed in that, since the RCN started pushing nursing as a profession rather than a calling, it has tremendously eroded what was unquestioning support, goodwill and admiration for the nursing profession from the general public.

In the past ten years, my family and I have very frequently required the services of the wonderful nursing staff at our local hospital. As far as I am concerned, the nurses not only deserve everything they want, they should get at least double that. The RCN, as a professional body protecting the interest of nurses, should be doing everything to get the support and sympathy of the public as propaganda will win the battle, not industrial action.

J Mark Oates

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Yes I think Nurses deserve decent pay, no I don`t think they should strike.
Should they feel it necessary within their ranks to strike I don`t think the public would go against them but probably more against the Government to pay something decent.

As an alternative to Strike action, what if the Union organised a mass petittion (like the Road Charging one recently) and demonstration type rallies to highlight the wage the Nurses receive?

Obviously there are logistics involved with the Rally situation and the idiot brigade would need to be kept away as they`d just try to cause trouble but otherwise I`m stumped to a solution for you guys.

I`d happily sign the petittion though :)
(and give ya a cheap lift to work....if ya worked in a local hospital! Lol)

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Nurses good will and reluctance to strike will always be taken advantage of. I would have no problem with nurses going on strike, but I don`t think now is the right time to do it. Gordon Brown couldn`t possibly be seen to give in to a union (even nurses) so early - the Tories and other unions would have a field day. Accept the poor pay deal now, let some other union take on Brown first (and no doubt lose) and then quietly threaten action in the run up to the next election when the chances of success will be much better.