Have Public Sector cuts now gone to far?

Toko Black

Even with average increments applied, in real terms, the average public sector employee currently would be on -5.67% the value of their wage in 2009-2010.

Ruperts slippers

My wife's job has a NHS starting salary of 21909 non negotiable, a private hospital equivalent post varies, salaries start from 27000 with bonuses and negotiation is possible..  It should be said the private staff will be considerably more productive than their public sector counterparts..
Equivalent pay in the private sector for my wife's current 'grading' varies from 30000-45000, wife is currently a mid band 6, with incremental increases to come. Once she jumps to a band 7 post next yr, the pay is again, substantially higher in the private sector..

messimagician

My wife is a nurse that's just landed a new job within the NHS. She got a band 6 role after 3 years working on a very busy ward. So busy in fact it was damn right dangerous. some times she had 12 patients by herself when I believe it should be 7 patients to one nurse.

On the other hand I've heard private hospital nurses are so relaxed that they could work horizontal. The fact they get payed a lot more is interesting but for how long and what benefits do they get extra.

nheather

Again I'm not denying that the salary position is not poor - I'm just questioning the "my salary now is identical to what it was in 2010", nothing about relative salaries, I'm talking absolute salaries.

Until November I had been on a real 0% pay rise for three years with performance rating of 'Very Good' (which is pretty hard to acheive, the majority get 'Adequate' or 'Good').  But even then I still got annual bonuses.  The company had done a 'realignment of roles' with the real agenda of telling everyone that they were overpaid.

I told them to stick it in October, which left them with a critical role to fill and they had to bring someone in on more money than me.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm pretty unambitious but after three years I had had enough so I find it difficult to comprehend a unionised workforce sitting on a true absolute 0% salary increase for six years.

Cheers,

Nigel

Ruperts slippers

According to Mrs Neilios, different wards have different levels, so ICU will have one to one care, day surgery will have one nurse to eight beds for instance. Different hospitals will have different levels of productivity too, wife has spent all her career in the largest trauma centre in Europe, so it's fast paced, long hrs, brake neck, very high standards and accountability, firm management.. She's now moved to our local hospital which is a lot more relaxed, but listening to the time served with little experience of other hospitals, anyone would think they'd been working in a Gulag..

I come from a performance related pay environment, business ownership and management experience, so when I listen to the endless tales of mismanagement (Band 6 and above), crying, laziness, dodging, sickness and waste I become angry.
As an ideal the NHS is marvellous, in practice, like all central planning socialist organisations it becomes a money-pit, we could double the NHS budget, but due to the nature of the beast, that money would be absorbed within a few yrs.. Add to that the obvious exterior pressures from the population and advancements in medical care.

Ruperts slippers

The unions are useless, the staff motivated by money went and found the extra income by moving to agencies, Hunt has now quashed that and people are going back, like my wife, luckily she found  a team leaders role, hopefully she can jump up the ladder and have a 8-430 working pattern, rather than the disruptive 7 days, 24hr rota with on-calls.. This will also allow her to jump up-to the next pay band. And then if she wishes she could move on up to a private hospital with a major increase in salary.. People have to take control of their own circumstances..

Faust

I posted this from the PCS on page 1 of this thread - not sure if you read it or not but this confirms what has been said.

Faust

I'm sure with your background you could sort this out immediatley - put them on zero hours contracts and scrap workers rights perhaps?

Faust

Surely the people are the union - therefore the union officials can only act if their members are prepared to back them.  This is one of the reasons why the civil service have had no increases for years.  The majority of the staff are women, many part time and when push comes to shove they aren't prepared to lose a penny of their pay in order to fight for anything.  Result - union impotence.

The government know the staff won't walk out so basically stick two fingers up at the union.

nheather

I did read this and I did see it to a degree when I was trying to google my own facts.

So I agree that I did see that the old scheme of 'guaranteed progression' was removed, but from what I read it wasn't just removed and left with nothing - the guaranteed element was removed and replaced with progression that needs to be earned and demonstrated.

So no more "I've done an appalling job but its one year on so I must be more experienced, give me a pay rise".

So my understanding is that under the new scheme, staff are still getting progressional increments but related to actual performance - welcome to the real world.

Civil service pay guidance 2016 to 2017 - GOV.UK

Also the transition to the new scheme was part of the 2015 spend review - so does not account for the period right back to 2010.

Again I'm not denying that HMRC are having their pay squeezed, I'm just doubting the general claim "not had a pay increase of any sort, no matter how small for the last six years".

Cheers,

Nigel