Nursing staff feel 'short-changed', says union boss as pay satisfaction falls in Shropshire according to survey
Nursing staff are feeling 'short-changed' by the Government, which has proposed a one per cent pay rise for NHS workers, a West Midlands trade union boss says.
It comes after the latest NHS staff survey results have shown that fewer hospital nursing staff in Shropshire are happy with their level of pay than they were a year ago.
Satisfaction with pay has declined among many registered nurses and midwives and health care assistants in the county.
The Royal College of Nursing, the UK’s largest nursing union, says the falling satisfaction levels are further evidence of how undervalued many nursing staff feel and ‘deeply worrying’ considering the survey was carried out before the Government's announcement on pay.
The survey, conducted in October and November last year, found that fewer than one in three (29.9 per cent) registered nurses and midwives at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust are satisfied with their pay, compared to 30.3 per cent in 2019.
The drop in satisfaction rates among lower-paid health care assistants was greater, from 25 per cent to 20.6 per cent.
At Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital near Oswestry, 36.9 per cent of registered staff are content with their pay, down 0.7 percentage points from 2019, but satisfaction rates among health care assistants rose from 18.2 per cent to 21.2 per cent.
Outside of the acute and specialist hospital sector, just over a third (34.9 per cent) of registered nursing staff at Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust are satisfied with their level of pay, a decline of six percentage points on 2019.
Among health care assistants the satisfaction rate fell from 21.4 per cent to 17.5 per cent.
Lindsay Meeks, the RCN’s West Midlands regional director, said: “Nursing staff are earning less in real terms than they were 10 years ago and these results are a further sign that more and more of them are feeling short-changed by the Government for the skills, knowledge and responsibility they have.
“It’s clear and deeply worrying that many nurses and health care assistants were already feeling undervalued when they completed this survey in the middle of a pandemic, so imagine how they feel now the Government insists they deserve nothing more than a pay award below the cost of living – in other words, a pay cut.
“The Government must commit to a fair pay rise to properly recognise the value of nursing, to avoid the risk of more nurses leaving the profession and to help alleviate the persistent staffing shortages that compromise the quality of patient care.”
The RCN is calling for a fully-funded pay rise of 12.5 per cent for nursing staff in 2021/22.
The planned one per cent pay rise for nursing staff was defended by the Prime Minister, who said it was as much as the government can afford at the current time.
