in HEALTH

A FAIR PAY RISE -YOU’VE EARNED IT!

Facts 0n NHS PayJune 2014

Hard working health workers deserve a pay rise Years of below inflation pay rises on top of pay freezes and the soaring cost of living is making it hard for millions of workers to put food on the table and pay their bills.

Everyone in the NHS from nurses, health visitors, and paramedics to scientist, cleaners and porters all workhard taking care of us and delivering the vital services we rely on, but who’s taking care of them? Not this Government.

4NHS WORKERS

www.unitetheunion.org

ALRIGHT FOR SOME

UK Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt: "There needs to be pay restraint..."

Hunt's personal wealth is £18.65 million!

Jeremy Hunt has decided that NHS workers don’tdeserve a pay rise!Last year Chancellor George Osborne announced that NHS pay would becapped to 1% for the next two years.

Despite this, and clear recommendations from the NHS Pay Review Body toimplement the 1% in full, Jeremy Hunt has announced that NHS staff in England will not be getting a pay rise at all this year.

Breaking up the national pay structureWales and Northern Ireland have agreed to pay talks about distributing thelimited pot while Scotland has announced they will at least implement the 1%pay rise and bring in the Living Wage.

Abolishes the NHS PRB?In June 2013, the NHS Pay Review Body (PRB) was told by the Governmentthat it couldn’t recommend a pay uplift of more than an average of 1% acrossthe NHS pay spine. This means that the Government had allowed a 1% increase for all NHS staff and would have put the money aside.

The Pay Review Body recommended 1% cost of living increase for all NHS staffand 1% on high cost area allowances. The Government ignored it, and hastold it that it will not collect evidence for next year. This begs the question isthere a future for the NHS PRB?

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4NHS WORKERS

Even 1% is a miserly figure It works out as just 7p an hour

for the lowest paid staff and an average of 13p per hour

if distributed equally amongst all Agenda for Change staff.

That is less than the cost

of a tin of beans!

Non-consolidated uplift In England those at the top of their pay band will receivenon-consolidated uplifts of 1% this year (essentially abonus) and maybe 2% next year (1%+1%).

Non-consolidated pay does not improve your pensioncontributions so pensionable pay will be on the basis ofyour 2013 pay even in 2015 – another pay cut!

Increments are not a pay rise Those not at the top of their band (55% of staff) will keepgetting their incremental pay increases this year but nextyear all pay increments will all be frozen.

When Agenda for Change pay scales were established in2004, it was agreed that the top of each pay band wasset as the real rate for the job, with staff expected togrow in their skills and experience until they reached thisrate. NHS increments are therefore part of your profes-sional development and are only awarded on staff achiev-ing the requisite knowledge and skills, as well asincreasingly their performance targets.

Are you better off in the devolved countries? The short answer is marginally,particularly in Scotland. Thepromised pay talks in Walesand Northern Ireland are basedon the same limited pot thatWestminster has promised. Thereality is that these can onlylead to further pay cuts.

In Scotland, the Governmenthas been better, but a cynicmight say that this is not unrelated to the current independence campaign. Either way the point is that 1%is still a pay cut, in real terms.

What has happened to NHS pay?Above you can see the difference in percentage terms of how fast RPI – a measure of inflation – has increased compared to how fast, or not, NHSpay has increased. NHS staff have not had a real-terms pay increase since 2006, with the brief exception of 8 months when RPI was negative.

Just looking at the period since the General Election this means that between 2010 and 2014 Agenda for Change staff will have lost between12%-15% of their purchasing power. This amounts to £1750 for the lowest paid or £15,000 for the highest paid.

4NHS WORKERS

Morale The Government’s pay policy is having a devastating impact on NHS morale,affecting service quality.

Unite’s NHS pay and terms survey in 2013:• 68% of respondents report morale has got worse over the last year.

• 87% of respondents think that Government pay policy is unfair

• 56% of respondents would not recommend their job as a career in the NHS

• 89% say they are worse off compared to the cost of living

How has your workplace or department responded to the financial challenges facing the NHS?

Percent

Recruitment freezes 54%

Restructuring/reorganising services 75%

Outsourcing 17%

Cutting services 31%

Down-banding 29%

Changes to terms and conditions 38%

Reduction in posts 54%Unite’s NHS Pay and Terms survey 2013

But instead pay has gone down and down… With each month and year that has passed where NHS pay has risen slower than inflation the accumulative impact has been worse and worse on the pockets of individuals and the budgets of households - and this is just in the past few years.

The loss of RRP along with

overtime reduction has had a

big impact on my standard

of living.

Estates Worker, South West

The constant attack on

all of my contractual condi-

tions…increased weekly hours…

increased workload… and attack

on our pensions has totally

robbed me of any motivation to

further my training as no benefit

financially will arise from it.

Administrator,

Scottish Ambulance Service

It would be nice if our hard

work and dedication was

recognised. Have worked in

NHS since 1975!

Health Visitor, South East

“

”

The NHS is being asked to do more at a higher quality for less money. It doesn't

take a genius to realise that this is not possible without cutting corners. The

experience of Stafford suggests this is the tip of an iceberg. It is the dedication

and professionalism of staff that prevents this being more widespread.

Health Care Scientist, West Midlands

Earned by thehighest-paidNHS executive

than ward nurses,who earn as littleas £21,388 a year

NHS staff earn belowthe living wage

ES/6479/5-14

www.unitetheunion.org

4NHS WORKERS

NHS pay is becoming more and more unequal The difference between the highest paid and lowest paid member of staffon the agenda for change pay scale has expanded 10% since the spinewas first introduced. This spread is even worse when the increases of doctors and dentists and very senior managers are taken into account.

Low Pay Around 350,000 NHS staff earn less than £21,000 a year – the figureused by Government as their low pay threshold for public service workers.

The Living Wage is calculated as the wage needed to cover the basic costof living in the UK - currently calculated as £7.65 an hour or £8.80 in London1. Over 40,000 NHS employees currently earn less than this wage.

The cost of bringing these all up to Living Wage level would be a total of£19-20 million across all four UK countries – or under 0.07% of the totalpay bill and 0.018% of the total NHS budget (2012/13).

High PayIn contrast the NHS now is reporting some of the highest pay for seniorstaff on record. Very senior managers have had average pay increases indouble figures (estimated to average 13% since 2009)

A survey by the Daily Telegraph has found that more than 7,800 NHS staffwere paid over £100,000 last year, with a third of them earning morethan David Cameron’s £142,500 salary.

428 high earners have been paid more than £250,000 each. The true figures are likely to be far higher as dozens of hospital trusts failed to respond.

1Living Wage Foundation 2014

More than just cuts to basic payWorkers in the NHS have also experienced serious attacks to theirwider terms and conditions. Many people have faced actual reductionsin their position on the pay scale and cuts in the allowances that contribute to their earnings.

NHS staff hare faced unprecedented attacks on their basic terms andconditions, including changes to on-call payments, sickness policies,overtime rates, unsocial hours and cuts to recruitment and retentionpremia. Others have had sections of their job stripped away leading totheir job being re-graded at a lower pay rate (down-banding). In somecases Unite members have lost between 10-30% of take home pay asa result of these changes.

Unite opposed the introduction of performance related pay in the NHS.These changes will serve as a bullying charter for managers, preventwhistleblowing and are designed to supress staff pay. Performance payis renowned for increasing pay inequality and driving discrimination inthe workplace. Many employers are not properly impact assessing newperformance pay systems, have no means of local modulation and arenot considering training staff and appraisers on the system, especiallyequality training.

The changes to NHS pe

nsions in 2011-12 resul

ted in

billions of pounds being

cut from your pension benefits.

The Government imposed chan

ges resulted in:

• Higher contribution r

ates for staff

• Lower inflation accru

al rates

• Staff working longer

with later a retirement age.

The Pension has now go

ne from a £2 billion surplus

to a growing deficit tha

nks to Government

meddling.

PENSIONS

UNITE IS SAYING“ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!”Join us to demand fair pay in the NHS:

• End to cuts to NHS funding

• An end to poverty pay in the NHS

• A pay rise for all NHS staff

• Greater equality across the pay spines

• Reform of the pay reviewprocess to include real negotiations on pay in the NHS