Nurses considering strike over pay

[AB Asks]

The Government have announced a below inflation pay rise for nurses. The increase in pay will happen in two stages which is effectively works out at as less than two per cent a year. But there will be a 9.2 percent pay rise for servicemen and women which will happen almost immediately. There is concern that nurses will take industrial action as they take the rise as a 'slap in face.' What do you think? Is this rise fair? Should they get a bigger increase? What will happen to services provided by the NHS if industrial action is taken and strikes happen?

[ollyjolly]

This is absolutly right they are lucky to get. If the NHS was run as a business not a charity for the public sector incompetant people then half of them wouldn't have a job. Are heroes in Iraq are getting shot at, living in hell for six months at a time and for what, not even the minium wage. If they strike Sack the lot greedy pigs

[mullein]

Ollyjolly with that attitude I only hope that you or your loved ones are not unfortunate to end up in hospital. It is not the nuses fault that the government seem to 'crap', on them whenever they feel like it. The nurses, doctors, health professionals deserve their pay to be kept in line with inflation. What the government are offering is a pay cut. How valued would you feel if year on year the standard of your living was going down. If this carries on the next thing that will happen is that the nurses will realise that they will be better off on the dole than working and then we will have to import some foreign nurses from Iraq, India, or anywhere else that this government can get cheap labour!

[ollyjolly]

But the point hear is that this government has spent, spent and spent agin without thinking how it can pay for this borrowing. Now we are starting to see MR BRown struggling has he can't borrow but has to start cutting .

[point&push]

Come and work in HSBC with me, thirty years later and still on �15k pa. Yeah we get shouted at every day just cos the punters can't have a loan/credit card/bigger overdraft or whatever. Banking exams mean nothing to Stephen Green chief exec) any more. When I started work we had one Area Health Authority. That was devolved into four smaller ones. Didn't that mean four chairmen, accountants etc for every one? So where does the money go, into people who don't treat patients, just sit pushing pens all day. If you wanna strike go ahead but complain about the pen pushers first.

[WendyS]

I understand that anybody in the NHS who is offered a below inflation pay increase would feel aggrieved. But right now there are also thousands of young qualified doctors with enormous bills from Medical School who have spent even longer than nurses in their training not even being offered interviews for jobs and facing unemployment as a result. And I think that being unemployed with all that specialist knowledge is far, far worse than still having a job, even if the pay increase is minimal.
I fear that much of the money the government has pumped into the NHS has been wasted and mistargeted.
If less money was spent employing the bureaucrats and the administrators who spend all their time chasing targets and filling in forms, perhaps the money could be redirected where it would best benefit the NHS. But sadly, I fear the NHS is now damaged beyond redemption and that must be really depressing for all the dedicated people who work within it.