UK nurses begin unprecedented strike

what is "unprecented" on that?

if they get salaries they deserve there will be no strike.

UK is not Japan,here will be never any strike at all.

I read all the junk, so the nurses work insane hours during the pandemic, cost of living keeps going up but the UK government offers an increase that essential means the nurses are actually losing purchasing power based on inflation.

So seeing all the rest of the false claims of the nurses being really bad people, we now have Nadhim Zahawi Chairman of the Conservative Party trying to now say that by striking the nurses are helping Putin and Russia!

Yes he actually said that!

The nurses need to accept the lower salaries in his words

Nadhim Zahawi:

"we have to come together this is not a time to be divided, to I hope send a very clear message to Mr Putin he can't use energy as a weapon and we will remain United"

So threats, every false claim in the book didn't work so now claim the nurses are helping Putin.

More from Nadhim Zahawi

'It is difficult I am absolutely conscious of the fact of how hard it things are but it's not a time to go for a 19% pay rise"

Yes I am sure he understands how hard it is with his £100 million.

Yes the man claiming to know how had it is for a £30,000 a year nurse to live has over £100 million.

The strike is the first in the Royal College of Nursing union's 106-year history.

That's why it's unprecedented. Nurses have never done it before.

Imagine having to do a job as hard and skilled as nursing and have to use a food bank, not afford to heat your house, and to have to pay for parking at work. The whole thing is disgusting.

Eastman

Today 03:45 pm JST

what is "unprecented" on that?

> if they get salaries they deserve there will be no strike.

> UK is not Japan,here will be never any strike at all

Because the nurses can leave to take a job in a private facility and negotiate a higher salary.

My doctor's own wife left her nursing job in a major university hospital to go work better hours, much more pay and far less stress in a private elderly care home in Tokyo.

So if they don't like the pay and conditions Japanese nurses can shop around for better.

I seem to recall that Brexit was going to result in a flood of revenue for the NHS. Where is it? Wouldn't that deluge of funding be more than enough to pay nurses (who provide the overwhelming majority of patient care) with the pay raises (we Yanks don't say "rise") they deserve and demand?

It couldn't be possible that that was a lie, told by liars who got some gullible people to believe it? It alsmost seems like this whole Brexit thing was an objectively stupid idea...... But I digress.

BP rakes in record profits, but whatever you do, don't tax energy companies to pay for basic infrastructure. No sir, that would be Socialism.

The Rail companies too. They made record profits last year but no love for the drivers. You know? the ones that actually make the choo-choos go?

I am all for Capitalism, but this isn't it. What you have here is Robber-Barron Mechantilism where the losses of companies are socialized, but they cannot be asked to fund the basic skeleton of society that they benefit from.

(Of course, when they have a spot of trouble overseas, they are right quick to the Foreign Office to lodge their complaints. This happens in the US too. Steve Jobs was fixated on he feduciary responsibility to his shareholders and ignored little things like sending jobs to low wage labor countries or off-shoring the profits to avoid taxation. But when intellectual property was concerned, he had the State dept on speed dial!)

The nurses were the heros early on, remember? They deserve to earn a wage that keeps them housed, clothed, fed, warm. You know the luxuries in life.

And the rich (and rich corporations) should be taxed becuase they benefit from a sound NHS.

Good. They should be paid properly. And if people suffer or even die, then it just goes to show how important they are, and that they should be paid properly.

The nurse on the far right of the pic looks especially peeved.

The govt told them to go take a hike, and they walked out. Pretty easy to understand.

Several family members were NHS nurses but left because of pay and working conditions.

Doctors and nurses have struggled through the covid pandemic, and many have died, without the full support of the government. Serious lack of ventilators, PSE. Lack of testing.

Working all shifts with masks caused skin problems.

Boris promise the £300 million per week paid to the EU would go to the NHS once Brexit happened.

NHS nurses are overworked and underpaid.

The ambulance people accepted a pay deal.

Good on them. The small people are sick and tired of massive profits only for the top CEOs.

The government maintains the demands are unaffordable

Then that will be the real reason why patients are put at risk, trying to deflect the responsibility to the nurses when they have already given much more than what they should has no justification.

Sacrifices have to be done in times of crisis, but expecting all those sacrifices to be done by the frontline workers is a recipe for disaster. If the government thinks other things have a higher priority than giving human working conditions and salaries for nurses then those other things will have to compensate when the whole public health system collapse.

For some perspective, a new hire at McDonald's in the US makes about the same as the UK nurses do.

Damian Lewis received his CBE for his services to drama and charity on Wednesday.

The actor, who in 2014 was appointed an OBE for services to drama, was awarded the honour by King Charles at an Investiture at Windsor Castle.  

Damian, 51, who co-founded Feed NHS, a campaign aimed at raising £1 million to get hot, healthy meals to frontline NHS staff during the pandemic, was among a number of people recognised with royal honours at the ceremony.

Jonathan Pie summed up the whole mess as usual.

The amount of money that Tory governments have squandered & stolen in the last 5 years beggars belief.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gljtvwhcdhc

"Further pay increases would mean taking money away from frontline services at a time when we are tackling record waiting lists as a result of the pandemic," he added.

Well, don't take it away from frontline services then

Jonathan Pie

Bingo. Pie's a fraud, a fake and a front for some seriously nasty people.

https://libcom.org/article/unsurprising-reason-jonathan-pie-rants-sound-straight-out-spiked

For some perspective, a new hire at McDonald's in the US makes about the same as the UK nurses do.

The average McDonald's salary ranges from approximately $17,525 per year for Floor Supervisor to $159,199 per year for Director of Product Management.

The average wage of an NHS nurse is £33,000, around $40,000.

As an aside, the Scottish Government (health is a devolved matter, and I work for the NHS in Scotland) have come up with a different pay deal for our nurses so they are not on strike.

I'd trust Jonathan Pie before I trusted the Tories

OK so as of today the 4% offered would cost the NHS about £3 billion the government says the full increase demand would cost £9.5 billion (17.5%) so inflation is at 10%.

So a compromise of 12% for now seems fair but where to get the money, well the £2.5 billion in weapons (not humanitarian aid just weapons) to Ukraine, a special tax on the windfall profits the British oil and power companies are raking in should cover that and more.

See a perfect solution.

UK take care of your own first worry about others later.

"In the event of an emergency and the oxygen masks drop, secure you mask first before assisting others."

We have all heard this before on a flight, why? Because if we lose consciousness then we cannot help others.

This applies to everything in life, first fix things at home so you are better able to help your neighbours otherwise you will both fall and fail.

Lets drop the politics.

The toxic politicking, NHS is a service that is unfit for purpose.

Wes Streeting MP's plan for a more sustainable NHS

https://www.rsm.ac.uk/latest-news/2022/wes-streeting-mps-plan-for-a-more-sustainable-nhs/

Speaking as part of the RSM ‘In Conversation Live’ Series, he also discussed how to address workforce needs within the health service, why he supports assisted dying, and detailed his own experience of the health service when he was treated for kidney cancer in 2021.

To strike when the taxpayer has agreed to rightly increase remuneration to NHS Pay Review Body recommended a pay rise of at least £1,400 ($1,740) on top of a 3.0 percent pay rise last year is totally irresponsable,

I would suggest extremism, after a pandemic, and the backlog for appointments to diagnose cancer treatments at its earliest stage

The nurses have the support of the public.

I have no doubt that the public have respect for clinicians, but I question the RCN motives.

I also question the publics support for strike action by the RCN for a settlement the RCN know, any Government regardless of ideology, could never agree to.

This is why an independent pay review body was agreed by all parties.

Nurses and doctors within hospitals have been undervalued by consecutive governments in the UK for the last 40 years. It's been documented that some nurses can't even afford rent and have been living out of their cars, and some have even been forced to go to food banks as they can't afford groceries. Meanwhile there are annual pay increases for MP's and shareholders of corporations and energy companies announce record profits. British politicians and the media who prop them up are a disgrace.

Oh, and frontline services? Nurses are the frontline services!!!!....What they mean is... "Further pay increases would mean we can't give as much to our friends who are buying up medical contracts with their companies".

No budget for nurses, supporting a war is costly

Maybe that's what they meant by frontline services

There is no denial that clinicians are facing financial hardship.

A challenging reality born out of a failure the NHS system has refused to confront.

The question systematic, in a refusal to reform a top heavy antiquated bureaucratic inflexible structure without plan or purpose.

They can find an easy £500 million for the NHS from just taking half the wealth from the top 10 Tory MPs actually it £500 million isn't even half.

The same nurses who took care of Boris when he was in the hospital with covid.

The starting salary for a Band 5 nurse is £27,055 a year - nearly £6,000 below the £33,000 average UK salary for a full-time worker.

Around two-thirds (67%) of nurses are on Band 5.

The highest Band 5 salary is £32,934 but it can take a nurse up to 15 years to earn that amount. Nurses in Band 6 start at £33,706, rising to £31,659 for Band 7, £48,526 for Band 8a, and £95,135 for Band 9.

With these starting salaries, I honestly don't see how the UK even has any nurses. Hard to believe anyone would school for that profession with that renumeration in the first place.

The average McDonald's salary ranges from approximately $17,525 per year for Floor Supervisor to $159,199 per year for Director of Product Management.

The average wage of an NHS nurse is £33,000, around $40,000.

Those are old numbers for McDonald’s. The McDonald’s down the street from me is begging to hire teenagers for $20/hr. That’s $38,400 per year for full time not including overtime.

Nurses work every single day, are on call 24 hours a day, every single day on the year. The deal with peoples, blood, vomit, and pee, deal with trauma and mental illness, that people don't even see. or will ever have to deal with. During the HIV pandemic, when fear was everywhere is were the nurses, who helped those patients, advocated help for drug addicts, needle exchanges, and safe sex practices, and some nurses accidentilly died after getting infected from needle stick accidents. diuring the pandemic, the public in the UK at 8pm clapped to say thank you. Some nurses and docs died looking after patients, after getting infected, some nurses broke down, woke over time, and helped anyone and everyone that needed it. Clapping doesn't pay the bills, and the Tory gov are saying a 3% pay rise is enough. Inflation is running at 11% so this is a 8% pay cut. If the gov, trained more nurses, instead of bringing in cheap immigrant nurses,( cause the UK doesn't have to train them), the UK service might be better. They have cut, cut and cut again, now the Tories are trying to amputate the service, by defending it. They maybe be training more nurses, but it seems more are retiring than than are being recruited. it also didn't help that the Uk left the EU, so now can't recruit nurses from the EU as quickly. and frankly many EU nurses may not want to work in the UK for fear of being kicked out again. Nurses salary isn't that great when you think they have to pay back their student loans too. It's also a reason why British nurses leave to go to the USA, Australia, Saudi Arabia. Nurses working hours, conditions, staffing levels, and pensions have all been cut, to safe more money. and ultimately those working hours and conditions is bed, nursing time, listening time, that's being cut. I wonder how much is the value of a nurse when we are in pain, a hand that touches you when you get that devastating news, and an ear, when we need someone to ask to, without any judgement. I think its INVALUABLE. Pay up, and ask the public to pay more.

300 million to a baroness for PPE that didn't work.

A tracking system that cost millions that didn't work.

and they say they can't afford it. Remember the Brexit bus that said 350 million pounds a week, for the NHS. Well, come on Brexiteers, pay up. Or was the big red bus, just a big red herring?

An American nurse do not make no less than 50k

Antique,It maybe people take better care of themselves ,they wouldn't need the service of a doctor or nurse,most could care less about a patient health as long as they get paid

GPs are impossible to access and the NHS is falling apart. Instead we have Ibuprofen. There is no part of the UK that the Tories have not broken.

The UK was not designed for the UK in 2022.

The UK needs to switch to a system more like Japan's, where the user pays a certain amount from their taxes, but also a certain percentage at the hospital, too. 30% or whatever.

This would cut down on frivolous hospital visits and also get more money into the system.

The NHS was designed for the UK in the 1950s and 1960s. It can not function like that anymore.

Ending up like the Americans with their failed healthcare system would be horrible for 90% of UK people.

We need a happy medium.

The UK economy is crumbling. Bad Covid policies, rising rime and drug use, and fewer people with the desire to enter the workforce.

It's only going downhill from here.