Post
by Paul Waine » Wed Mar 21, 2018 6:41 pm
The Times (on-line) report:
Calls to boost pay for public sector as NHS workers see rises up to 29%
Ministers are under pressure to offer all public sector workers a pay rise after some NHS staff were promised rises of 29 per cent.
All NHS staff will be paid above the living wage of £8.75 an hour after ministers agreed to scrap the lowest pay band for nurses, hospital cleaners and more than a million other staff.
They will get pay rises of £2,300 over the next three years. Some workers on £31,000 will get rises of more than £9,100 over the same period.
All will receive at least 6.5 per cent.
Sarah Gorton of the union Unison said: “The agreement means an end at last the government’s self-defeating and unfair pay cap. It won’t solve every problem in the NHS, but would go along way toward making dedicated health staff feel more valued.”
Trade unions have agreed a deal with NHS bosses which the government has agreed to fund in full, signalling an end to years of pay restraint that has built resentment among frontline staff.
A controversial proposal to force staff to give up a day’s holiday in exchange for a rise was dropped. There had been fears that the condition, described as “mean-spirited” by John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, would have irritated staff and made it harder to retain workers who are already contributing unpaid overtime.
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, did not push for the idea and agreed with unions that it was not necessary. Instead unions have agreed to look at how sickness absence in the NHS, which is higher than in other organisations, can be reduced.
The 14 trade unions that represent NHS workers are due to recommend the deal formally to members after a meeting this morning. There will be a 3 per cent rise in 2018-19 followed by rises of 2 and 1 per cent in the subsequent two years. Mr Hunt had been pushing for a pay rise since the election, saying last summer that he had a “great deal of sympathy” for nurses.
Philip Hammond, the chancellor, agreed to find new money for the deal after NHS bosses warned that having to pay for it out of already overstretched budgets would harm patient care. Mr Hammond said in last week’s spring statement that he hoped to be able to spend more on public services if the economy continued to improve.
A shortage of trained staff has emerged as one of the biggest problems facing the NHS, with tens of thousands of vacancies across the health service. Recruitment problems have been blamed on staff pay rises which have been capped at 1 per cent for the past five years, after two years in which they were frozen. Ministers accepted that it would be harder to retain skilled workers if real-terms pay, which has declined by thousands of pounds a year since 2010, continued to fall.
Today’s deal covers nurses, midwives, therapists and healthcare assistants and is likely to be targeted at the lowest paid, with some getting rises of up to 30 per cent as low pay bands are abolished. The Royal College of Nursing, Unison and other unions will ask members to support the agreement. Pay for doctors and senior managers is covered by separate deals which are not expected to be so generous. Yesterday the NHS agreed a 1 per cent pay rise for GPs.
PW notes: I've added the underlines. I've also omitted a few short paras that don't directly address the pay rise.