At the risk of being extremely controversial, I have to say I have mixed feelings about the threat of industrial action by some NHS workers in response to the government’s 3% pay offer. First, allow me to put into context what I mean. I bow to no woman or man in how much I love the NHS. It is our greatest national institution, Britain’s finest peacetime achievement. Its staff are the very best of us and during Covid many were nothing short of heroic. NHS trade unions concluded that all NHS workers should get a 15% pay rise, That stopped me in my tracks. There are something like 1.5 million people working for the NHS. I had to conclude that 15% was, perhaps, excessive. Here’s why.
A fully qualified Band 5 NHS nurse’s starting salary is £24,907, rising to £30,615, the Band 6 maximum is £37,890. You will not hear me saying that NHS staff, particularly nurses, do not deserve salaries like these. Indeed, I have said on many occasions whatever NHS staff are paid it will never be enough. But then, what about other workers who earn nothing like these figures? Those in the care sector, few of whom are unionised, work enormously long hours for the minimum wage. In my last job in the care sector, where I never had a single pay rise in three years, I worked with care workers. The last two told me they earned £6.56 an hour because of their ages. This is the norm in the care sector. It’s often arduous, sometimes back-breaking work with no hope of career progression or of earning a decent living wage. This is not the case in the NHS.
“Ah”, you say. “No one is forced to work in the care sector. If these people don’t like their poor pay and difficult conditions, no one is forcing them to do it.” Which is all true. But SOMEONE has to do it. Someone has to feed people who cannot feed themselves. Someone has to wipe their bums. If no one does these jobs, the cost to the exchequer in providing additional care homes would be astronomical. By comparison, NHS salaries are relatively generous. No one working in the NHS is going to say, “I’m giving up my annual £30,615 to work for around half that. I’ll still be working evenings and weekends and I’ll have to buy a car out of my minimum wage to enable me to do the job. When can I start?”
Many other groups of workers are receiving zero by way of pay rises this year. In fact, most of them are. While many are lavishly rewarded bean counters, like civil servants in the MOD, others like emergency workers, as well as benefit paying staff have had extremely tough years and they have been rewarded by a pay freeze. The government has decided some groups of workers are more valued than others and care-workers are not valued at all. I don’t think that’s fair, either.
And there’s another thing. Even the 3% pay rise will be very expensive. Will it come from the NHS’s existing budget or will it be new money from the exchequer? Before we even consider where a 15% pay rise would come from, how about the 3%? Will there will be cuts in equipment, even cuts to jobs? No one is talking about this, no one is even asking the question, but if we are to have a sensible debate, we all should be.
3% doesn’t sound much but 3% of £24,907 is a tidy sum. It’s way above inflation. It’s a small ‘real terms’ increase, but a real terms increase it is.
How will we all feel if NHS staff go on strike, with all that entails, and how will we feel if the government caves in and awards staff the full 15%? There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening but for the same of debate, imagine it did happen. Many workers have had pay cuts, worse than that others have lost their jobs. There are lots of jobs out there but few offer good salaries like, er, the NHS.
The NHS staff unions complain 15% is needed because workers’ earnings have fallen below inflation since 2010. That’s partly true, particularly for those on the maximum salary, but many people have moved up the pay grades and gained promotion. It’s too simple – and wrong – to say everyone has had a pay cut or even a pay freeze. In the round, as ever, there are winners and losers.
Without knowing all the facts, 15% extra sounds a reasonable amount to pay national heroes. But until we know all the facts, I find it very hard to support it at all. Not for as long as there are minimum wage care workers along with millions of other heroes who have been rewarded with nothing and in some instances less than nothing.
