Pay Rise Cancelled for NHS staff

macaque_2

Doctors and administrators are wildly overpaid. Incompetant managers are wasting countless millions on agency staff. They are spending countless millions on luxury offices, perks and pensions. They are throwing away countless millions in compensation for carelessness. They have created one of the biggest and most useless beauracracies in the world.

Useless middle and senior managers will continue as if nothing has happened. Meanwhile, people in the trenches will pay the price. The bottom line is that nurses are not over paid.

After supplementing their income with overtime and including location-based bonuses, qualified nurses earn £31,500 per year on average, data from the NHS Information Centre shows.

http://www.nursingtimes.net/acutesectornurses/breakingnews/2008/06/nurses_pay_increases_by_42.html

How can a doctor get paid 5 times as much as a nurse for part time work in the NHS? For a government that made fairness its watch word, New Labour have created the most horrendous distortions and inequalities in the market.

Graham_Devon

macaque wrote: »

How can a doctor get paid 5 times as much as a nurse for part time work in the NHS? For a government that made fairness its watch word, New Labour have created the most horrendous distortions and inequalities in the market.

You are referring to consultants. Not doctors. You have also called it part time work, which it's not.

Consultants have undergone nearly 15 years of training.

Thats why they can command more. Why would anyone train for that long to not get any benefits?

macaque_2

Graham_Devon wrote: »

You are referring to consultants. Not doctors. You have also called it part time work, which it's not.

Consultants have undergone nearly 15 years of training.

Thats why they can command more. Why would anyone train for that long to not get any benefits?

GPs earn between £100k and £250k

If it is not part time job doctors would not be doing private practice on the side. In most jobs, this would be forbidden.

It is a gravy train and has nothing to do with length of training. The average salary of chartered engineer with 15 years training is a tiny fraction of what doctors get paid.

To suggest that a doctor is worth 5 nurses is just ridiculous.

dopester

macaque wrote: »

To suggest that a doctor is worth 5 nurses is just ridiculous.

Maybe they are worth 5 nurses, but they sure won't be worth £150K+ in today's new world.

Everyone seems stuck in the old-world mindset, when banks and City businesses were kicking up multi-billions in tax revenue annually.

Now the boom is over, businesses which could only survive in boom conditions are failing, better businesses which expanded and took on debt to do so are over-leveraged and in trouble (like that company who bought the airport for £10+ billion and is now feared it is only worth £1.5 billion today).... the simple truth is public sector wages are old levels, and private sector too in most instances, can not be supported for much longer at old-world levels. There isn't sufficient real money/wealth in the system.

Mix in crashing house prices, stockmarket hits - wiping off trillions in asset wealth.

I agree doctors and specialists, both NHS and private, who are experts in their field should be highly rewarded in pay, but the system can't keep paying old-world salaries, as the real money isn't there, or is rapidly running out - and can't be whizzed up in a printing machine, as doing that makes everyone poorer still.

Old_Slaphead

twirlypinky wrote: »

I just rang my friend who works in NHS finance.

Not only have they been told no such thing, but she says their budget setting for 09-10 currently taking place is including a 2.4% pay deal.

This was all signed and sealed last year in a 3 year agreement, which was so low in the first year that compared to inflation it amounted to a pay cut.

There were millions in the private sector who got NOTHING last year and in 2009, many have received NOTHING, pay cuts or P45s !

Public sector, as a whole, has done extremely well over the last 5 -10 years (see ONS stats). Many have had well above inflation increases).

Private sector pay has only exceeded inflation for the last few years because of the significant increases imposed by the Government on minimum wage (ie up 27% over last 5 years) and that affects a lot of the private sector (nb no public sector worker receives the minimum rate of £5.73)

Why should public sector be continually expect to have inflation proofed increases when virtually no one else has.

Andy_L

chewmylegoff wrote: »

i'm not saying that pay should not be frozen, but there needs to be a proper joined-up approach to controlling public sector expenditure. firstly the public sector needs to have proper discretion on how to distribute its wage pot between its staff. blanket pay rises (or freezes) are a product of the government being too scared of the unions to say "no, we'll actually take individual ability and performance into account, rather than just pay people more based on how long they've been here (a measure which is probably inversely proportional to their ability in many cases)."

Do you honestly feel that, e.g., the NHS negotiating ~1.5million individual pay rises every year is more efficient (& thus cheaper) than collective negotiation?

Spartacus_Mills

ILW wrote: »

Another none job paid for by the taxpayer.

Yup, another one for the Golgafrinchan "B" Ark.

Graham_Devon

macaque wrote: »

GPs earn between £100k and £250k

Completely wrong.

Dylanwing

Divide and rule strikes again! The majority of Public Sector workers are paid slightly less than in the Private Sector, and as a rule, when times are good, Private is better, in recession, Public is better. The big problem is at the top end, where the Public Sector is over-loaded with vastly overpaid senior staff, and the jobs and responsibilities are not comparable. In addition, PFI contracts drain resources, paying key staff less, but giving Executives huge bonusses, and as for the leech-like Consultants - A cost-effective short-term bulls hit spouting leech numeric reduction plan, with a view to achieving a residue number of 1 within a week needs urgent implementation. (If you are wondering, I might exempt the young blond near me on grounds of her large baps!).
The REAL enemy are Bankers, Politicians, Management Consultants and shop assistants who chew gum, not fellow workers.

dopester

dopester wrote: »

I agree doctors and specialists, both NHS and private, who are experts in their field should be highly rewarded in pay, but the system can't keep paying old-world salaries, as the real money isn't there, or is rapidly running out

Just to mention, a friend had cause to ring a well-known private-healthcare provider recently, to do with his policy - which he has decided to keep running.

The employee on the line for some reason snapped to the conclusion he wanted to cancel his policy, and later admitted a big surge in cancellation of private healthcare policies - presumably by those stretched and under financial pressure.

Can you keep the salaries whacked-up high when the flow of money coming in, is signifcantly reducing?