Quote Originally Posted by Rez1862 View Post
Being an NHS nurse, I have been on the fence about replying to this thread but reading some of the hugely disappointing, and frankly ludicrous, comments on here I felt compelled to reply.

There are a few comments made that I want to clarify. First of all - and I have heard this from various people - is that we 'signed up for this'. We have had up to a 20% real terms pay cut in the last 10 years. There are 50,000 nursing vacancies across the NHS. Morale & people are shattered. The population is increasing and people are living longer, with more complex needs; the demands on the service are stretched to breaking point and this will only get worse.

When I trained, we were given a bursary (c. £500 a month) to help fund our training (apologies if this is common knowledge but nursing students work for 6 months a year on placements). This was taken away by the Tories and now nursing students have the privilege of paying 9k a year to work during their training. It isn't an attractive proposition to even get potential nurses to apply and join the NHS.

The starting wage for a band 5 NHS nurse is £13.84 an hour. Around £3 an hour more than then national living wage. Nurses are highly skilled individuals - we don't walk round fluffing pillows and mopping the doctor's brow. If you think that nurses aren't worth £3 above the national living wage whilst ignoring the billions and billions of pounds given by the Tories to the cronies in the PPE scandal then you are part of the problem.

We are campaigning for fair pay. Fair pay = more staff (both recruiting and retaining) = better staffing levels = better patient care.

This post isn't designed to engage further disagreements, I just wanted to give people a little insight as to why we are striking.
Thanks for this post and for sharing some first-hand experiences.

I think it's hard for many people, including myself, to understand the issues that NHS staff have and how low morale is. But lots of people are struggling. Real-term pay cuts aren't limited to NHS staff. Real earnings are down nationwide on average 3% in the last quarter alone. Everyone is feeling the pinch.

Most of us operate in industries where if you were to demand more money by not working, you'd simply get fired. And rightly so. So if negotiations with your manager fail, you either accept it or move on to a more lucrative role. Also, many of us work in industries that are increasingly precarious with the onset of automation and AI. It's up to us to figure out what we'll do when the work disappears.

What I'm trying to say is, these are difficult times for all sorts of reasons. Most of us are suffering as well but don't have a way to 'campaign for fairer pay' other than to jump into opportunities that pay more, retrain, or, if we are self-employed, work more.