Importing workers

Graham_Devon

This one all seems a bit stupid to me...

The London Ambulance Service is experiencing a rather large crisis in recruiting, and keeping Paramedics. UK based paramedics are leaving the profession at rates of up to 30 per month.

The report, entitled Making the Case for London, stated that if current trends continued there could be 600 frontline vacancies across the LAS by the end of 2014.

The report said that affordable housing and transport costs were some of the issues which could affect whether staff choose to stay in the role.

So basically, paramedics are being priced out of London by high living costs.

So what do we do? We approach Australia and Poland and start poaching their paramedics.

The problem with this (quite aside from the fact that Australia etc are loosing paramedics!) is that this then costs us considerably more than it does to hire a paramedic in the UK.

The average cost of a paramedic trained and living in the UK is £27,901 (in London).

However, we pay up to $76,000 to someone we pull in from Australia. £38,249 in UK money. In some cases, there are bonuses attached of a further $9,000.

So desperate was the London Ambulance Service to fill positions that about 50 graduates recruited last year were offered a bonus of more than $9,000 if they were prepared to fast-track their move to London to begin training in January this year.

Graduates are offered a permanent contract and are offered visa sponsorship, if needed, for three years with the opportunity to extend, and are given a salary of $60,000 to $76,000, as well as a supplement for living in a high-cost area if employed in central London.

We also spend a lot of money on Visa's, placements, etc. The reason for the higher pay is firstly to tempt them over (their pay in Australia is higher than ours here), but secondly to make sure they can afford to live here.

So I ask...

What is the point in all of this? Why refuse to increase UK based paramedics pay, but then pay an extra £11,000 to import someone precisely because those you refused to increase the pay of are leaving?

I bring this up as it's all related to the millions extra were now paying on agency workers in the NHS (on the news yesterday) all because we simply refuse to increase the pay in the sector so fewer and fewer choose the profession.

How can we celebrate high living costs if it all comes at this expense?

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays

Perhaps because there is a structural problem that throwing money at won't resolve? The ambulance service in Wales is in a parlous state - and paramedics there earn an above average salary. It would appear that people quite simply don't want to do it, for what reason I don't know.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-31008978

Generali

We have a similar thing here to attract skilled workers to rural areas. We are probably poaching each other's workers!

[Deleted User]

It strikes me that if what is claimed by some to be too large a number of workers in direct competition with "ordinary" workers - at or around the minimum wage - was instead a surge in doctors, lawyers, accountants, architects, and others of a similar "standing" - resulting in the great and the good experiencing the difficulties faced by the "ordinary" people - the attitude of the "powers that be" would be somewhat different.

If the wealthy and powerful could not find health services, homes, schools and employment, we would soon see if we are indeed "all in this together".

As long as the importing of workers assists the business owners, it is my sincerely held belief that the new government does not give a flying "fox" about anything else.

WR

[Deleted User]

You can't pay ambulance workers more, because of their NHS grade, and the banded pay structure used in the NHS.

Want to pay them more and you need to raise their band. BUT, you can't do that without them having the responsibilities of the band.

Tromking

ringo_24601 wrote: »

You can't pay ambulance workers more, because of their NHS grade, and the banded pay structure used in the NHS.

Want to pay them more and you need to raise their band. BUT, you can't do that without them having the responsibilities of the band.

You pay the remuneration required to recruit and retain the quality of staff you need surely?
Its not only in the Ambulance service, there`s a crisis in the Prison Service too. After 4 years of ill thought out rationalisation, a much vaunted recruitment campaign was launched last year and 1600 new staff came on line, the only problem was that 1200 left, and the 390 nett gain has barely dented the chronic staff shortages nationwide. NOMS now has the perfect storm of a rapidly ageing workforce who will be gone within 5-10 years and because the newbies are leaving within 12 months there will be no-one to take over with the experience needed to keep our prisons on an even keel.
The cracks are beginning appear in our public services.

CLAPTON

if there is a shortage of labour increasing the salary will help

the government needs to reform national salary scales asap


not rocket science

princeofpounds

National pay bargaining and banding rather than merit-related pay is a killer for labour flexibility.


Localised shortages are always going to be inevitable in a system like this, because areas with worse conditions (let's say the bottom 10%) will naturally require more compensation.


Raise the compensation bands sufficient to address your shortage areas, and you will be vastly overpaying for the 90% of the system that has surpluses or balanced supply and demand.


It makes the whole thing unaffordable, and so if you are running that system you are going to give up on the most problematic areas just to make sure that the majority of the system remains in some kind of affordable balance.


Just imagine how ridiculous it would be if we paid London weighting rate to all public sector workers... Well London is often treated as a special case now, but we effectively do the same by applying 'south-east' rating across the public sector.


It's one of the biggest factors driving privatisation of services; companies can pay sensibly, the public sector cannot. So there are instant savings available for getting people off national pay scales. By refusing to be competitive, unions will, over time, cause their members to be out-competed.

Tromking

princeofpounds wrote: »

It's one of the biggest factors driving privatisation of services; companies can pay sensibly, the public sector cannot. So there are instant savings available for getting people off national pay scales. By refusing to be competitive, unions will, over time, cause their members to be out-competed.

An outdated 20th century argument your'e making there re. public services. Public services have and are continuing to be reformed and consequently people are now reluctant to do some of these roles wherever they happen to live.

CLAPTON

Tromking wrote: »

An outdated 20th century argument your'e making there re. public services. Public services have and are continuing to be reformed and consequently people are now reluctant to do some of these roles wherever they happen to live.

which public services are people reluctant to do even for more money than non state sector jobs?

Andy_L

ringo_24601 wrote: »

You can't pay ambulance workers more, because of their NHS grade, and the banded pay structure used in the NHS.

Want to pay them more and you need to raise their band. BUT, you can't do that without them having the responsibilities of the band.

You can get round that limit with the use of recruitment & retention allowances. But that would require admitting that, in some areas, public sector pay isn't enough to recruit & retain people which is a bit of a political no-go area (in the Civil Service anything over £3k has to be signed off by the minister)