Although a think tank has claimed that national pay rates are unfair to public sector workers, nurses’ leaders attest that local pay rates will result in thousands of professionals leaving the NHS in protest.
According to a report by the right-wing Policy Exchange, a huge £6.3 billion of public money could be freed up by bringing public sector wages into line with those for comparable posts in the private sector.
Authors Ed Holmes and Matthew Oakley said that such savings should be ring-fenced for investment in boosting local economic growth, which would create 288,000 private sector jobs in areas of high unemployment.
But they also claimed that the current system of uniform national pay rates was damaging to public services “because the public sector can struggle to recruit and retain the right staff in high-cost areas or areas with significant disadvantages”.
The authors likewise attested that national pay rates were unfair to public sector workers themselves because “their pay does not deliver the same living standards for the same jobs across the country”.
They cited Sweden as an example of where trade unions had supported a shift towards a regional model because it gave more opportunities to boost pay through local productivity agreements and innovation.
But the Royal College of Nursing disagreed. It has written to senior managers at a consortium of 20 Trusts in south west England who are considering going down this route in a bid to save money, warning that the move will result in staff leaving and patient care suffering.
Skills drain
The South West Pay, Terms and Conditions Consortium, which was set up in June, recently published two papers concluding that more than 6,000 jobs out of a total of 68,000 in the area could be saved by introducing a more “fit for purpose” system of pay and conditions. Pay typically accounts for 65% of the average hospital Trust’s budget.
Although nothing has yet been decided, proposed changes to staff working practices include longer working hours and cuts to annual leave, sick pay and on-call payments. Health unions have so far refused to recognise the consortium, branding it a “cartel”.
Nonetheless, the idea of dropping nationally negotiated pay and conditions is garnering interest from other NHS leaders across England. As a result, the RCN has now published its own assessment of the potential impact of such a move in a bid to head any moves off at the pass.
Drawing on Department of Health data, the union points out that the south west may have the oldest population in the country, but the number of qualified nurses, midwives and health visitors is below the national average.
This means that the region is poorly placed to cope with a likely “skills drain” of NHS staff angry at having their pay cut, not least because the number of qualified nurses in the area has dropped by more than 3.5% since March 2010.
While morale is already low at many Trusts, the report concludes that cutting pay or jobs “would put even more pressure on an already weakened workforce”.
“Not only is there a real risk that staff will be forced to leave the NHS, but it will also be difficult to recruit, and the morale of remaining staff will be damaged further,” the report added.
