NHS pay – the facts

This week, Unite joins several other unions in strike action and action short of strike over NHS pay. Bosses, as usual, will do all they can to discount the reasons for our health workers’ fight for a decent wage. Their red herrings will be faithfully reported and recycled in the media, but UNITElive is here to bring you the cold, hard facts.

1. For NHS workers, real terms average weekly wages have plummeted by 15 per cent since 2010.
Of course, the Tory-led coalition government will say “we’re all in this together,” that everyone’s wages have stagnated in the last few years. But according to the Office of National Statistics, average weekly earnings for all other workers have dropped by 4.4 per cent. Our supposedly valued health workers have had it nearly four times worse than the rest of us.

2. The NHS pay strike is robustly supported by participating unions and their members.
Any time workers justifiably withdraw their labour to negotiate a fair pay rise – an exercise that forms the cornerstone of developed democracies – bosses say there’s no moral mandate for striking because turnout for strike ballots is so low. But the mandate for this one, is, well, striking.

Among Unite members alone, a full quarter of members turned out to vote. Compare this turnout to turnout at many local elections, where the rate is sometimes less than 15 per cent. The NHS pay situation is so grave that midwives, who have never participated in strike action, have joined in the fight for this one.

3. The public overwhelmingly supports an NHS pay rise (even Conservative MPs do!)
More than just a moral mandate among unions, there’s resounding public support for NHS workers who subsist on poverty wages. A Unite-commissioned survey found that 66 percent thought a below inflation cap on NHS wages was unfair, with only 22 per cent saying it was fair. A substantial majority – 61 per cent – stood fully behind today’s strike action. Even a majority of Tory MPs in another poll of 100 MPs favoured the pay rise!

4. It has already been proven that a one per cent pay rise for all NHS workers is entirely affordable.
The independent Pay Review Board, which recommends NHS pay to the Department of Health, has confirmed that a one per cent pay rise for all NHS workers is affordable within the constraints of the NHS budget. Even the coalition’s own Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, said in his Autumn Statement in 2011 that a one per cent pay rise for all public sector workers would be affordable in the coming years.

5. NHS workers were the only public sector workers who did not receive the promised 1 per cent pay rise.
All other public sector workers got their much-deserved one per cent pay rise. The exclusion of NHS workers from their due pay award is especially baffling when we consider MPs gave themselves an outrageous 11 per cent pay rise.

6. Keeping wages low among NHS workers is a perverse political choice.
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt can drone on and on about the financial necessity of keeping health workers’ pay so low. But NHS Scotland implemented both an across-the-board one per cent pay rise for all its health workers, with an additional £300 extra for those workers earning below £21,000. Make no mistake – the current pay offer is a political choice, one designed to further antagonise an already demoralised health service.

7. Pay progression does NOT cover soaring cost-of-living increases.
Hunt’s argument against a blanket one per cent pay increase is that the workers on incremental progressive pay increases don’t need the one per cent rise. But pay progression is not the same thing as an annual rise. Incremental increases are meant to reflect the growing skills that health workers gain over time as they become more experienced.

The work of health service professionals is literally a matter of life and death, and as any doctor or nurse will tell you, the more time you spend on the service, the more adept you become at helping save lives. The one per cent pay rise NHS workers are calling for is to reflect the astronomically rising cost of living.

8. Turnout on the day of the strike will be tempered by what NHS workers can do. We will not put patients’ lives at risk.
Critics will come out on full force today, arguing that if there is not a high turnout on the day of the strike, it’s because it’s not supported by health workers. But health workers – despite being on poverty pay – take their jobs very seriously. Some of our members are limited in the strike action they can take, but they are fully behind the fight to get the pay they deserve by embracing other forms of action, including an overtime ban and working to rule.

9. Jeremy Hunt has a duty to negotiate pay, which he has abdicated by refusing to sit at the table with trade unions in any meaningful way.
Despite what the mainstream media will have you believe, trade unions and their members hate strikes. They are only used as a very last resort. In fact, the last time NHS workers took strike action over pay was over thirty years ago. Our first approach in any dispute is negotiations. But the Health Secretary has cut pay and patently refused to sit at the table and come to a deal.

 

10. Today is more than just about NHS workers’ pay.
NHS workers are some of the most dedicated public servants in the country, and will work long and hard hours and endure stressful conditions for the good of the patient. More than anything, NHS workers care deeply about the lives of the people they treat. Beyond pay, today is about advocating for a well-funded NHS, protected from the private profiteers and cuts that threaten to destroy it.

Stay tuned on UNITELive for the latest on the NHS pay strike.