When I
opened my wage slip, after the much talked about and hyped NHS pay rise, I
couldn’t see any increase. My pay had barely risen by a few pounds. I was not
the only person to experience this, it wasn’t a payroll error, the vast
majority of NHS staff were shocked by how little they received in their pay
rise. Some people got as little as a 35p pay rise (1).
In June
we (nurses) voted to accept a pay deal that we were told would give us a 3% pay
rise (2), so why did we get such a small one, certainly not 3%?
Back in
April I blogged about the pay deal (3), while it was still being offered to us,
and I found it wanting. I actually found it a poor deal that took away far more
than it gave (And to answer the question at the end of blog, in the end I
didn’t vote for the deal because researching it showed me how bad it was), and
that was when we were being told we would be getting a 3% basic pay rise. The
reality turns out we only received a 1.5% pay rise in July (4), but how did
this happen?
The
advice the RCN issued to their members, they said nurses would receive a 3% basic
pay rise for 2018-2019 (5). This briefing was were I took my information from,
like many others did, but this information wasn’t correct. The actual deal
stated that by the end of the next financial year (March 2019) all NHS staff
will have received a 3% overall increase to their pay (6). This pay deal saw a
restructuring of our Agenda for Change pay points, the yearly pay increases
staff receive under the Agenda for Change deal (5), for most nurses their pay
points will be cut from six to three, meaning people will reach the top pay for
their pay bands quicker and then will only receive the yearly, negotiated pay
deal (3). Most nurses will therefore be re-banded this year and will see their
pay increase, but only when they reach their Incremental Date, the date they
joined or re-joined the NHS. For most nurses their Incremental Date was not in
July, mine wasn’t, and for many nurses they will not see a year’s worth of
their new pay point when we hit April 2019. The government’s deal was that we
would get a 1.5% basic pay rise this year and then our re-banding would see our
pay increase by an average 1.5% and so by April 2019 our overall pay would have
increased by 3% or so. This deal never contained the offer of a 3% basic pay
rise (6). NHS Employers made this clear in a statement dated July this year
(6). So why didn’t the RCN tell us this was the deal on the table when we voted
on it?
In
July, RCN general secretary Janet Davies wrote a letter to all RCN members (7),
in it she said: “In good faith, we told
all members they would receive a 3% uplift [??] this summer. I now find this is not the case for everyone. I can assure
you I am demanding answers for you.” (7) The wording here is important. She
wrote “a 3% uplift”, she didn’t say
pay rise. Why didn’t she say “pay rise”? Did she already know that we wouldn’t
be getting a 3% basic pay rise?
The RCN
issued guidance to their reps (8), which was leaked in July, which stated: “The initial increase for most other staff will typically be 1.5% until
they reach their normal incremental pay date.” (8) Clearly the RCN knew the vast majority won’t
be receiving a 3% pay rise this July, and clearly the RCN was expecting large
numbers of very unhappy members. This guidance document is very much a damage
limiting exercise, fortunately it didn’t work.
NHS
Employers statement contradicted Janet Davies’s letter (6). They issued a
statement that stated: “The letter states
that the RCN has in error told members in one of its documents that they would
all receive “a 3 per cent uplift this summer.
“The framework agreement, which is the document
agreed by the NHS Staff Council that the RCN consulted its members on, does not
make this claim.” (6) So, according to NHS Employers, the RCN knew that we
wouldn’t be getting a 3% rise well before July, so Janet Davis shock and anger
are at best misplaced, and at worst dishonest.
But all
this still doesn’t explain why the RCN signed up to such a poor pay deal.
The RCN commissioned
the Electoral Reform Services (ERS) (9) to conduct an independent review of how
the RCN handled this. This was commissioned by the RCN as they were facing an Extraordinary
General Meeting (EGM) were there was a call for a no confidence vote in the
whole RCN leadership and calling for the RCN council to step down (10). I
wonder how much they hoped this report would be another damage limitation
exercise. If they did it failed.
The ERS
published an interim report in early September (9), the full report is to come
out later this autumn.
The ERS interim
report (9) found that the RCN lacked communications leadership, and failed to successfully
communicate the Government’s offer to its membership. This is shocking. An
organisation the size of the RCN (It has 435,000 members (11)) should have a
well-oiled communications machine. It represents nurses, midwives and
healthcare assistants, it needs to be able to communicate complicated
information to its members quickly and clearly, and yet it wasn’t able to
communicate to its members that this pay offer contained a 1.5% pay rise and
restructuring of our Agenda for Change pay points which would give most members
an average rise in overall pay, by March 2019, of 3%? Why was that so
difficult?
But this wasn’t
the only finding from this ERS report. They also found a lack of scrutiny of
the offered deal by the RCN leadership. On the 2rd March Josie Irwin, the RCN’s
lead negotiator with the Government, tried to go through the offer, line by
line, with the RCN’s executive team, but there hadn’t been enough time allocated
to that meeting for her to do so (9). This I find shocking, the RCN’s executive
team didn’t have the intelligence to allocation the time needed to do this.
They were in negotiations with the Government for the first decent pay rise NHS
nurses would see in eight years, and they could not or would not be bothered to
make it a top priority, with the time it needed. It was certainly a top
priority to the vast majority of RCN members.
At that
meeting RCN Wales director Tina Donnelly wanted to scrutinise elements of the offer
but was stopped by then General Sectary Janet Davies, saying the deal was only
for England and Tina Donnelly’s input was “not
required” (9). It seems that Janet Davies actually stopped scrutiny of the
offer, which again calls into question the letter she sent out to RCN members,
and what she said in it.
The worst
thing to come out of this report was a briefing from RCN lead negotiator
Josie Irwin to the chair of council on 21 February, which stated: “If the unions (this means Unison and/or RCN
for all practical purposes as the two biggest trade unions) are not able to go
out to members with a positive recommendation to members the Treasury will…
consider it too risky to proceed and the framework will be off the table.”
(9)
This is
just breath-taking in its spinelessness. The RCN were giving in to Government
demands that they accept the deal now or they would remove it altogether. The
RCN gave into the Government’s threats and bullying, and they didn’t even tell
their members about the Government’s actions.
Of course
the Government wanted the unions to quickly and quietly accept this deal,
without any public embarrassments coming from the unions. The junior doctors’
one day strikes in 2016, over another deeply unfair pay deal, were toxic for
the Government, and left they marred under negative headlines and public
support for the doctors. The Government certainly didn’t want any more
industrial action from the rest of the NHS. And the RCN played right into their
hands and gave the Government all the good headlines they wanted, all the
positive press over a 3% pay rise for nurses. And even more cynically, the
Government gave us our smaller-than-a-nat’s-cough pay rise in July, when
Parliament was off on its summer holiday. So Theresa May didn’t have to answer
an awkward questions, in the House of Commons, about robbing nurses of any sort
of a decent pay rise. Nice (!!).
Heads
have rolled at RCN, over this appallingly poor behaviour, and rightly so. Janet
Davies, RCN’s General Secretary, resigned in August (12). Did she jump or was
she pushed? I am not sure but her behaviour was deeply unprofessional.
Following a vote of no confidence in them, at the EGM on 28th
September (13), and the RCN Council have all resigned (14). I would say the
Council did the “decent thing” but it took an EGM to force them to do so, and
before it they produced an email, to be distributed to RCN members, claiming, “This is a potentially dangerous time for the
college with [a] small group of members putting at risk what has always been a
proudly non-party political organisation, acting on behalf of and
representing members whatever their opinions or background.” (15) This is a
breath-taking claim, when the RCN gave in to Government pressure to accept a
pay deal, which they hadn’t fully scrutinised, which has actually left nurses
worse off.
What
about Josie Irwin, the RCN lead negotiator, who negotiated us into this mess?
According to the RCN website and her twitter feed, she is still in post.
What next
for the RCN? Nominations for the RCN council elections has opened (16), so we
need people willing to stand. But we need new and dynamic people, not the same
old people who are standing as a nice career move or people who have been
hanging around the RCN for years and want the status quo to continue. We need
new blood to shake up the RCN. We need an RCN that will actually fight for its
members.
What I am
hoping for is that RCN will take on the Government over this deeply unfair pay
deal. There is already a campaign to Ditch
the Deal (17) and I would really hope that the RCN will join it. I want the
RCN to put pressure on the government to rip up this deal and start again.
Nursing, in the UK, is in crisis, last year 33,000 nurses left the NHS (18),
and there are over 35,000 empty nursing posts in the NHS, which is a little
over 10% of all nursing posts (19). One of the reasons nurses are leaving the
NHS the poor pay, a report to the Commons Health Select Committee found (20).
The RCN should have been using this as a negotiating point, that the government
needs to do a lot more to reverse the lose of nurses or else patient care will
suffer, and patients denied care because there are no enough nurses to provide
it makes for very poor headlines, and this government does not like bad
headlines. Last week, the Salaries Review Body recommended that senior judges
in England and Wales should receive a 32% pay rise (21), and one of the reasons
for this huge rise is the poor recruitment to senior judge posts. How will 1.5%
pay rise encourage people to stay in nursing, let alone recruit new people into
the profession?
What I am
I going to do? There have already been calls for us to strike over this, over
the sheer contempt the Government has shown us (22). At he moment I am not
sure. So firstly I am going to email my MP and call on her to support us
(there’s a copy of the email below, feel free to copy and use it to email your
MP), and then I am going to email my RCN rep, and the new council members and
the new General Secretary, demanding that they Ditch the Deal and get us a
decent pay rise. We all need to keep the heat on the RCN and on our MPs, they
both rely on our support and we should make them work for it.
Theresa
May, in her speech to the Tory party conference, claimed the end of austerity
is in sight (23). This is not true for any of us in the NHS, and it’s her
government keeping us in austerity.
Drew
Payne
P.S. Find
you MP’s name and contact details here
My Email
Dear _____
I am an NHS
nurse and one of your constituents.
I am very
concerned that again nurses have received a pay rise that sees us worse off in
real terms.
This year
classroom teachers received a 3% pay rise, the armed forces received a 2% pay
rise (plus a one-off 0.9% payment), prison workers are receiving a 2% (plus a
one-off payment of 0.75%) and junior doctors received a 2% pay rise.
Back in March
we, nurses, were told we would be receiving a 3% pay rise but the reality was
very different. In July we only received a 1.5% pay rise and a restructuring of
Agenda for Change yearly pay increments, these were reduced from six to three,
for most nurses, leaving most of us worse off in the long run.
Nursing is in
crisis, last year 33,000 nurses left the NHS, and there are over 35,000 empty
nursing posts in the NHS, which is a little over 10% of all nursing posts. One
of the reasons nurses are leaving the NHS is over the poor pay.
We were sold
this pay deal on false claims that we’d see a 3% pay rise, when the reality was
much less. This less than inflation rise will see more nurses leaving the NHS,
and we are the backbone of healthcare, without us so much patient would be
impossible to deliver. 10% of nursing posts being unfilled is only increasing
the workload of the other nurses in the NHS, and this pay deal will not
encourage nurses to stay. If more nurses leave at the rate we have seen over
the last five patient care will be irreparably damaged.
I am emailing
you to ask for your help in supporting us nurses. Will you write to the
Minister of Health, Matt Hancock, and ask him to relook at this pay deal that
leaves most nurses worse off in real terms, and does nothing to encourage
nurses to stay working in the NHS, were we are needed.
Yours,
(My name)
(My address)
[Always
include your address when emailing/writing to your MP, to prove are a
constituent]
Public
sector pay rise details (24)
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