Letters
We welcome all readers’ letters, but reserve the right to edit them or withhold names and addresses. Please email: [email protected]
Please keep letters to a maximum of 150 words, and include your full name, address and a daytime telephone number
We must stand in solidarity and fight for our rights to get a better pay deal Following health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s rejection of the NHS Pay Review Body’s recommendations to give all nurses a 1 per cent pay rise in 2014/15, nearly 330,000 nurses will miss out on the pay award (News April 30). It will be given only to nurses at the top of their pay bands. I will be retiring in a couple of years and have just realised that I will lose even more money than I thought. The pay rise for those on the top of their band is nonpensionable and will not be added to my final salary for calculating my pension. This will mean that I face a further pay cut, even after retiring. So, now I have the prospect of a higher retirement age, a reducing state pension and work pension, and paying more each year for the privilege. When will nurses stand up for themselves? Surely they can see that a nursing shortage means that patients are suffering. Unfairly blamed by MPs for their mistakes, fewer and fewer people will want to stay in nursing. As I hear time and time again, including from female nurses, nursing is a predominantly female workforce, so they will not fight for fair pay. I hope this will be not be the case.
Why is the figure so low? Is it because nurses are weary and fed up, too busy with work demands and financial pressures? Perhaps they feel that they are fighting a losing battle, suspecting that pay decisions have already been made and there will be no change of heart. I sincerely hope that morale is not so low that we have lost our voice. Eva Trkulja, by email
Malcolm Harrison, Derby
IS MORALE AMONG NURSES SO LOW THAT WE HAVE LOST OUR VOICE? I was happy to respond to the call to sign Nursing Standard’s e-petition (tinyurl.com/pay-petition) urging the government to reconsider its decision to withhold the 1 per cent annual pay rise next year to nurses who are due to receive incremental pay rises (News April 9, 23 and 30). But I was disappointed to find that, out of our 670,000-strong nursing workforce, there are only 2,426 signatures so far.
GOVERNMENT TINKERING WITH AFC WILL NOT RESOLVE NHS PAY CRISIS Your readers panel (reflections April 30) was asked whether nurses should sacrifice incremental payments to give every NHS nurse in England a 1 per cent rise. The answer from the four panel members was a resounding no, and I should imagine this is representative of the nursing workforce at large. As patient safety adviser Jane Brown says: ‘The incremental payments are an agreed part of Agenda for Change and are separate to annual pay rises.’
The Agenda for Change (AfC) pay arrangements should not be dismantled or tinkered with through government penny-pinching. It took a great deal of work to get AfC up and running and to ensure that it was a fair system for nurses, recognising the work we do and rewarding us appropriately for it. The government wants to drive down public-sector pay and to introduce local pay arrangements. It is hard enough for us to live on the existing pay scales. Nursing will become a most unattractive profession if the pay rates are driven down further. Helen Evans, by email
SUPPORT OUR CAMPAIGN FOR BETTER TREATMENT FOR PEOPLE WITH MS Two new medicines for people with multiple sclerosis (MS) have recently been approved for use on the NHS, and two more will hopefully follow within the next year, taking the total to 11. It is an exciting, unprecedented time, but people with MS continue to
34 may 7 :: vol 28 noRCNi.com 36 :: 2014 STANDARD Downloaded from by ${individualUser.displayName} on Nov 23, 2015. For personal use only. NoNURSING other uses without permission. Copyright © 2015 RCNi Ltd. All rights reserved. 034-035w36.indd 34
02/05/2014 15:16
We welcome all readers’ letters, but reserve the right to edit them or withhold names and addresses. Please email: [email protected]
Please keep letters to a maximum of 150 words, and include your full name, address and a daytime telephone number
We must stand in solidarity and fight for our rights to get a better pay deal Following health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s rejection of the NHS Pay Review Body’s recommendations to give all nurses a 1 per cent pay rise in 2014/15, nearly 330,000 nurses will miss out on the pay award (News April 30). It will be given only to nurses at the top of their pay bands. I will be retiring in a couple of years and have just realised that I will lose even more money than I thought. The pay rise for those on the top of their band is nonpensionable and will not be added to my final salary for calculating my pension. This will mean that I face a further pay cut, even after retiring. So, now I have the prospect of a higher retirement age, a reducing state pension and work pension, and paying more each year for the privilege. When will nurses stand up for themselves? Surely they can see that a nursing shortage means that patients are suffering. Unfairly blamed by MPs for their mistakes, fewer and fewer people will want to stay in nursing. As I hear time and time again, including from female nurses, nursing is a predominantly female workforce, so they will not fight for fair pay. I hope this will be not be the case.
Why is the figure so low? Is it because nurses are weary and fed up, too busy with work demands and financial pressures? Perhaps they feel that they are fighting a losing battle, suspecting that pay decisions have already been made and there will be no change of heart. I sincerely hope that morale is not so low that we have lost our voice. Eva Trkulja, by email
Malcolm Harrison, Derby
IS MORALE AMONG NURSES SO LOW THAT WE HAVE LOST OUR VOICE? I was happy to respond to the call to sign Nursing Standard’s e-petition (tinyurl.com/pay-petition) urging the government to reconsider its decision to withhold the 1 per cent annual pay rise next year to nurses who are due to receive incremental pay rises (News April 9, 23 and 30). But I was disappointed to find that, out of our 670,000-strong nursing workforce, there are only 2,426 signatures so far.
GOVERNMENT TINKERING WITH AFC WILL NOT RESOLVE NHS PAY CRISIS Your readers panel (reflections April 30) was asked whether nurses should sacrifice incremental payments to give every NHS nurse in England a 1 per cent rise. The answer from the four panel members was a resounding no, and I should imagine this is representative of the nursing workforce at large. As patient safety adviser Jane Brown says: ‘The incremental payments are an agreed part of Agenda for Change and are separate to annual pay rises.’
The Agenda for Change (AfC) pay arrangements should not be dismantled or tinkered with through government penny-pinching. It took a great deal of work to get AfC up and running and to ensure that it was a fair system for nurses, recognising the work we do and rewarding us appropriately for it. The government wants to drive down public-sector pay and to introduce local pay arrangements. It is hard enough for us to live on the existing pay scales. Nursing will become a most unattractive profession if the pay rates are driven down further. Helen Evans, by email
SUPPORT OUR CAMPAIGN FOR BETTER TREATMENT FOR PEOPLE WITH MS Two new medicines for people with multiple sclerosis (MS) have recently been approved for use on the NHS, and two more will hopefully follow within the next year, taking the total to 11. It is an exciting, unprecedented time, but people with MS continue to
34 may 7 :: vol 28 noRCNi.com 36 :: 2014 STANDARD Downloaded from by ${individualUser.displayName} on Nov 23, 2015. For personal use only. NoNURSING other uses without permission. Copyright © 2015 RCNi Ltd. All rights reserved. 034-035w36.indd 34
02/05/2014 15:16
