As we approach this festive time of year, we often think of others and reflect on past times. It doesn’t feel so long ago that we were in lockdown clapping for NHS staff and other key workers.
This was encouraged by the government and the national media. And we quite rightly praised our amazing NHS staff – doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers – as well as other public sector staff including refuse collectors and teachers for the work they undertook in extremely difficult conditions.
These difficult conditions haven’t gone away for our NHS staff who have experienced brutal cuts in pay while being asked to do more in an under-resourced system.
NHS nurses’ pay has been squeezed by 8 per cent on average. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said that some experienced nursing roles have had real-terms wage cuts of as much as 20 per cent since 2010.
Our health care workers are struggling to survive. We have all heard stories of nurses needing to use food banks. This is nothing short of shameful for a country that’s ranked the sixth wealthiest in the world.
Nurses have had enough and for the first time in its history the Royal College of Nursing has called a strike.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that private sector pay grew 6.9 per cent between August and October 2022 while public sector pay grew 2.7 per cent.
This was among the largest differences ever seen between the two. But both figures are still below inflation – the rate of 10 per cent at which prices are currently rising.
The ONS also demonstrated that over the past decade, the wealth of the richest 10 per cent of households has grown 574 times faster than that of the poorest 10 per cent.
Rishi Sunak and his Conservative government are condemning the strikes, so far refusing to talk and find a negotiated settlement.
They are consistently running the line that inflation will rise and that the difficult economic environment (that they caused) will only get worse if wages rise.
It’s interesting how this economic convention that wages drive inflation is promoted. Let’s look a bit deeper. The inflation we are seeing is caused by several other factors
- the supply chain disruption caused by covid
- the reduction in the workforce which impacts on productivity
- the chaos of Brexit and
- the fallout from war causing high energy and food prices
…
The reality is that workers are not creating an inflationary cycle because they do not have the means to do so.
But the way in which this inflation is panning out, giving those who are already wealthy way above average pay rises, is feeding straight into a serious inflationary cycle.
Instead of allowing the Tory government to play divide and rule with us, pitting worker against worker, while those at the top rake in exorbitant “inflation-busting” profits and wages, let’s get behind our local nurses, ambulance drivers and show our gratitude and support at this festive time and into the new year. They well and truly deserve it.
Councillor John Allcock is the joint leader of the Labour opposition on Brighton and Hove City Council.
The average nurses salary when you include their incredibly generous pension is £50,000 a year. They should leave the food bank food to people that need it and get back to work or find a job elsewhere instead of trying to kill people through these strikes.
Small problem with your figure is that it is completely incorrect. Band 5 AfC for the average lifetime of a nurse. No point quoting an upper figure when it is a Banding that most nurses will never get to, and is takes longer than the average nurse stays in the profession for.
There’s also the alarming percentage of people who work in the NHS end up with PTSD. To just refer to pay is a minimalistic view that ignorantly ignores other factors as being key issues as to why there are massive shortages and why retention is so poor.
Missing from your list of causes is the fiasco of managing a fiat currency based economy as well as globalisation.
Relabelled devaluation of your currency and calling it quantitative easing will always result in inflation as the cost of imported goods increases due to the loss of value of sterling. The latest batch of QE was undertaken to fund a second disastrous lockdown and wasteful vaccination programmes along with tracking citizens.
I am not sure if any of the current political parties would have done a better job.
Definitely a bit of a poisoned chalice, the premiership has been. Political double speech has always been harmful to the user though, and I think that is what reputation ultimately comes down to. Integrity and honesty.
If they’re earning that much, they should be docked two days pay for every day they strike. Most of us have to put up with a 3-5% pay rise on a much lower wage and seem to manage fine. Nursing is a vocation, not a money grabbing exercise. And just to add, think about the people in Ukraine, and count your blessings.
If you’ve ever done any cursory reading, you would know that people don’t get paid for strike days which really hurts our Band 3 colleagues.
Any win for the nurses is a win for the NHS & a win for us all, same with the teachers & the rail staff & the postal workers. It literally is no more complicated than that…