Another public sector pay outrage

Graham_Devon

Bantex wrote: »

Souldn't be down to poor care though.

No, it shouldn't.

But I don't think thats in any way relative to the discussion.

You will always get bad eggs, especially so in the UK's biggest organisation.

Just as you get bad eggs in the private sector. The news of the world scandal, the banking scandal to name a couple. There are hundreds of cases in the private sector where poor standards have led to sometimes tragic consequences.

Privately run care homes are a prime example of where the private sector has, in some cases led to the death and sometimes abuse of innocent people.

What I'm saying is, it's not unique to the NHS. But similarly, I don't think you are ever going to end it. Public or private sector. Bad eggs will always exist.

chewmylegoff

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Is it?

Do you have any examples?

Were not talking about "working up the career ladder" here. Were talking about having 8 pay levels for the same job.

The idea was always to save money by the new starter starting on lower pay.

If you work in Tesco as an example, you are paid a set amount for the job you do. You don't start on a lower wage and then after 6-8 years finally reach the going rate for the job.

we are absolutely talking working your way up the career ladder, only you call it something else.

i have certainly never worked for an employer which paid people the same amount for doing the same job regardless of experience. i haven't worked for tescos but i don't believe for a second that they just pay people in skilled roles the same amount of money regardless of their experience.

unskilled labour, like stacking shelves or scanning barcodes is a bit different because you don't get better at putting things on a shelf just because you have 10 years' practice doing it.

you do get better at being a nurse when you get more experience, just like you get better at being a teacher, or an accountant, or a policeman or a derivatives trader or a heating engineer etc. that's why, over time you get paid more consummate with your experience.

after some time you stop getting paid more because you aren't really getting any better at your job. hence an audit manager with 15 years experience isn't likely to earn much more than an audit manager with 10 years experience. the reason for that is because they can't go to another firm and get paid more for doing the same job. they don't just keep getting more money every year because they have got older. once they have topped out they hope they get an inflationary payrise each year to tread water, but this doesn't always happen. if they want their salary to keep increasing by substantial amounts they have to persuade someone to promote them to a role which has a greater amount of responsibility.

sounds a bit like the nhs...

ukcarper

chewmylegoff wrote: »

we are absolutely talking working your way up the career ladder, only you call it something else.

i have certainly never worked for an employer which paid people the same amount for doing the same job regardless of experience. i haven't worked for tescos but i don't believe for a second that they just pay people in skilled roles the same amount of money regardless of their experience.

unskilled labour, like stacking shelves or scanning barcodes is a bit different because you don't get better at putting things on a shelf just because you have 10 years' practice doing it.

you do get better at being a nurse when you get more experience, just like you get better at being a teacher, or an accountant, or a policeman or a derivatives trader or a heating engineer etc. that's why, over time you get paid more consummate with your experience.

after some time you stop getting paid more because you aren't really getting any better at your job. hence an audit manager with 15 years experience isn't likely to earn much more than an audit manager with 10 years experience. the reason for that is because they can't go to another firm and get paid more for doing the same job. they don't just keep getting more money every year because they have got older. once they have topped out they hope they get an inflationary payrise each year to tread water, but this doesn't always happen. if they want their salary to keep increasing by substantial amounts they have to persuade someone to promote them to a role which has a greater amount of responsibility.

sounds a bit like the nhs...

I'm not sure if I miss understood you or not but as I understand there is a maximum on nurses pay scale which is reached in 8 years so a nurse with 15 years experience gets the same as a nurse with 8 years.

Graham_Devon

chewmylegoff wrote: »

we are absolutely talking working your way up the career ladder, only you call it something else.

This isn't wat agenda for change is. Therefore it's unfair to suggest that "nearly everyone in the private sector does the same thing". I'm calling it something else because quite literally, agenda for change is something else. It's not about career moves.

Agenda for change is about paying different wages to people doing the same job.

So, if say you are a ward nurse. You take the job and you get paid band 1 of tier 5.

Your nurse colleague, with the same qualifications, doing the same job, just for 5 years, will be on band 4 or 5 of tier 5. Theres been no career move for your colleague. Hell, you may have mor training than your colleage. It's just your colleage has been there longer. When your colleage reaches the top of her bandings after 8 years, she stays where she is and recieves only a cost of living pay rise, as she's now paid the "going rate" for the job.

The sole purpose of Agenda for Change was to save £1bn a year in the NHS by paying people less when they start.

When it was introduced, if a nurse role was paid at £15 per hour, the cap on the tiers for that role was £15 an hour. It's just new starters now started on £13 per hour instead of £15 an hour (which they would have started on if they had jined before AFC). Saves £2 an hour for that nurse role. Multiply that a few thousand times and you hit the £1bn saving.

All figures above for example purposes only.

No one was paid more. New starters just got paid less.

This was why everyone got a cost of living rise on top of any increase in their pay tier.

If a nurse did some training and became a midwife as a career move, she would move up to another band, and therefore get more pay. That, I believe, is the kind of thing you were implying.

Not many in the private sector work such a scheme for people doing the same job as far as I'm aware, which is why I asked you for examples as you implicitly suggested it worked the same in the private sector.

Heyhosilver

michaels wrote: »

Do you have any idea what percentage of my salary it would cost me to buy 1/60th of my final salary as a pension for life? :eek:

The 35% higher median salary is no doubt also a figment of my imagination.

And the 3% payband increment is the equivalent of £0per week take home....

Pure public sector bashing.


Public Sector jobs generally are higher skilled than the private sector. A much greater proportion require graduate qualifications.Even in the private sector such jobs attract good pensions. Much of the low skilled work was outsourced to the likes of Serco driving the average salary and terms and conditions down. I agree that you could outsource more of the public sector jobs to the private sector (eg nurses) but those would require similarly higher salaries, or even higher to reflect the inevitable reduction in pensions.


Do you realise that most of the public sector either do not have final salary pensions or very soon with lose them?

chewmylegoff

ukcarper wrote: »

I'm not sure if I miss understood you or not but as I understand there is a maximum on nurses pay scale which is reached in 8 years so a nurse with 15 years experience gets the same as a nurse with 8 years.

yeah. unless they get promoted to the next pay scale up.

Graham_Devon

chewmylegoff wrote: »

yeah. unless they get promoted to the next pay scale up.

But they won't.

You can't simply get promoted to the next scale up. You have to have the qualifications to do the next scale up.

The next scale up from a ward nurse for example would be a GP practice nurse, midwife, specialist operating theatre nurse.

You can't just get promoted to those jobs. You have to have the qualifications to do them. They are different jobs.

Just as a doctor cannot just get "promoted" to a consultant. They have to take that active decision to retrain. Very often self funded I may add. Midwifery courses for example are quite expensive.

ukcarper

chewmylegoff wrote: »

yeah. unless they get promoted to the next pay scale up.

If somebody in private industries gets promoted they get a pay rise.

ukcarper

I believe the maximum salary for a nurse is £28k is that really a high salary after 8 years in what is now a degree level job.

chewmylegoff

Graham_Devon wrote: »

This isn't wat agenda for change is. Therefore it's unfair to suggest that "nearly everyone in the private sector does the same thing". I'm calling it something else because quite literally, agenda for change is something else. It's not about career moves.

Agenda for change is about paying different wages to people doing the same job.

ok...

So, if say you are a ward nurse. You take the job and you get paid band 1 of tier 5.

Your nurse colleague, with the same qualifications, doing the same job, just for 5 years, will be on band 4 or 5 of tier 5. Theres been no career move for your colleague. Hell, you may have mor training than your colleage. It's just your colleage has been there longer.

no, it's because your colleague is a ward nurse with 5 years more experience of being a ward nurse. (if you are claiming that when you arrive you automatically get paid at the lowest spine point level regardless of experience, then that isn't true, i know that because OH moved into a new NHS job on the fifth level of an eight point band last week).

When your colleage reaches the top of her bandings after 8 years, she stays where she is and recieves only a cost of living pay rise, as she's now paid the "going rate" for the job.

she is now paid the going rate for a person with enough experience to be able to do pretty much everything the role requires, where additional experience no longer makes her materially better at her job. (see the 10 yr vs. 15 yr qualified audit manager above - this happens in every job, eventually you reach a point where your experience stops making you "worth" incrementally more money each year.

The sole purpose of Agenda for Change was to save £1bn a year in the NHS by paying people less when they start.

whatever the purpose of it, it brought the NHS into the real world where you don't get paid the same as a fully experienced member of staff in the same role until you yourself are fully experienced.

When it was introduced, if a nurse role was paid at £15 per hour, the cap on the tiers for that role was £15 an hour. It's just new starters now started on £13 per hour instead of £15 an hour (which they would have started on if they had jined before AFC). Saves £2 an hour for that nurse role. Multiply that a few thousand times and you hit the £1bn saving.

All figures above for example purposes only.

No one was paid more. New starters just got paid less.

new starters should be paid less; they have less experience. it's a skilled role.

This was why everyone got a cost of living rise on top of any increase in their pay tier.

i expect that was more to do with what the unions managed to negotiate rather than it being for a logical reason.

If a nurse did some training and became a midwife as a career move, she would move up to another band, and therefore get more pay. That, I believe, is the kind of thing you were implying.

no, i'm talking about when a nurse applies for another nursing job with more responsibility, perhaps managing some other nurses.

Not many in the private sector work such a scheme for people doing the same job as far as I'm aware, which is why I asked you for examples as you implicitly suggested it worked the same in the private sector.

pretty much everyone in skilled jobs in the private sector is paid in exactly this way. i gave you the example of accountancy, which is my profession, but you just ignored it.

so again. take two audit managers, both do the same job, one has 5 years experience of being an audit manager the other has three weeks experience. which do you think earns the most money (for the purposes of this example, they have exactly the same number of clients and manage the same number of staff).

is it A - they both get paid the same because that's the going rate for the job and no other employer screws its staff like the NHS does.

or is it B - the one with five years' experience gets paid more, because...he has more experience and is therefore more effective in the role.

(don't tell me, it's C - the one with three weeks' experience is unfairly paid less so the firm can save money)