Healthcare unions are urging the public to support their campaign for pay rises to recognise their work during the pandemic.
The Royal College of Nursing are calling for a 12.5 per cent pay rise for nursing staff across the UK, while the GMB is demanding 15 per cent and Unison had asked for each employee to receive an increase of at least £2,000 by the end of 2020 under its campaign to "give all NHS staff a decent pay rise”. Nurses are due to be considered for a pay rise in 2021-22, when the current three-year deal comes to an end. But care workers are still left in the lurch.
In her article for Labour List Nadia Whittome, wrote, “Many care workers across the country are employed as agency staff or on zero hours contracts. They struggle to get by on a national minimum wage that doesn’t pay them enough to live on. And what’s true for care workers is also true for the many low-paid private sector workers in retail, logistics and transport who have played such a crucial role in the pandemic.
“The Chancellor has frozen the pay of key workers outside the NHS in the public sector. The £250 award he’s tossed to lower earners is inadequate, amounting to just 68p a day. And the million outsourced workers who also provide public services are excluded. While NHS staff have been promised a pay rise, will it be anywhere near enough to make up for lost earnings after a decade of pay cuts? A nurse today could be earning around £2,000 less per year in real terms than they did in 2010.”
In the meantime, a recent survey by the Royal College of Nursing found that 85% of the 24,000 respondents had received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, including 7% who had received both doses. However, 15% of respondents hadn’t received the vaccine and the results show that of those who haven’t yet been offered it, 70% work in non-NHS settings.
Overall, regardless of where they worked, more than two in five agency nursing staff and one in four temporary staff, who often cover short-staffed areas, had not received a vaccine – compared to just one in eight hospital workers.
