I’ve stood on picket lines in support of junior doctors during the Jeremy Hunt years and am in total support of pay increases for all medical and non-medical NHS workers (Threat of nurses’ strike over 3% pay award for NHS staff, 21 July). Whenever pay scales are quoted, however, they invariably refer to medical pay grades and don’t highlight the harsh reality of low pay for other workers who represent the essential cogs in the NHS machine.
Along with cleaners ensuring the safety of all areas, and porters transporting seriously ill patients and taking the dead to the mortuary, there is rarely a mention of admin and clerical workers, who book clinics, liaise with sick and stressed patients when appointments are cancelled at short notice, chase up no-shows, arrange hospital transport etc.
When departments closed in the early pandemic days, these employees spent many stressful hours telephoning distressed patients. When limited clinics restarted, Covid tests had to be arranged for all those coming in for treatment. Now, many staff are working weekends to clear the backlog. These essential workers are on their own frontline when the system breaks down and patients have to be informed, pacified and reassured. A relative of mine, in her 50s, is paid under £20,000 a year for this service. Average house prices in Winchester are over £400,000, there’s a shortage of council housing, and private rents start at around £900 a month. I’m sure Rishi Sunak can do the maths.
Karen Barratt
Winchester
• With nurses’ pay set to fall by 7% in 10 years even after the latest pay offer, it’s surely time for nurses to follow the sterling example set by our parliamentary lawmakers and obtain a second source of income. According to openDemocracy, 237 MPs declared outside earnings in the 12 months from 23 March 2020, amounting to £4.9m of extra pay. Such entrepreneurial vigour is spearheaded by the former chancellor, now health secretary, Sajid Javid, who last year accepted a job advising JP Morgan for a reputed £150,000-a-year for 80 to 96 hours of work.
Sadly, not all nurses have investment-banking experience. Therefore, some may prefer to fill shoes recently vacated and closer to home as a non-executive director at the Department of Health and Social Care. Appointees to such Whitehall oversight jobs are paid up to £20,000 for 15 days of work a year.
If, however, at the end of a remorseless, seemingly never-ending day, nurses are too pooped to squeeze in another job, why not simply buy a second property and let it out? Some 116 of our industrious MPs are registered as landlords, each earning at least £10,000 a year from rent. That £10,000 is 40% of a nurse’s £24,907 starting salary. So why ask for a measly 15% pay rise, let alone accept the minuscule 3%, when 40% is there for the taking? Clearly, our nurses lack that proactive quality so brilliantly exemplified and championed by our politicians: common unadulterated greed.
David Hughes
Cheltenham
• May I point out that even if the 3% pay rise proposal is accepted, it will not benefit all health service staff but only those directly employed by the NHS? There are many thousands of essential NHS staff who are employed by agencies under outsourced contracts, such as cleaners, laundry workers, caterers etc. Many, if not all, of these essential staff will be on salaries governed by the national minimum wage legislation. Is the government going to increase the minimum wage for these workers by 3% as well? No, I didn’t think it would. However, these essential cogs in the mighty NHS machine deserve their rewards as well.
Roger Cook
Rufforth, North Yorkshire
• Re Lex Greensill impressing Matt Hancock with his “proposal to allow NHS workers to draw down on their salary early through an app” (Boris Johnson accused of orchestrating Greensill ‘cover-up’, 22 July), NHS workers would not need to draw down their salary early if their pay reflected their skills, hard work and importance.
Jean Betteridge
Failsworth, Greater Manchester
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