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Healthcare assistants working in the NHS are set to becoming minimum wage workers unless workers are awarded a restorative pay rise.
It comes following Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s announcement yesterday that the minimum wage will rise to £10.42 for workers in England.
Band 2 workers, including healthcare assistants and other clinical support staff in England, currently earn just £10.39 an hour – meaning their pay is now set to align with other minimum-wage workers.
It comes after a decade of real-terms pay cuts for NHS workers across the board and just days after nurses and other union members at 176 NHS organisations across England voted to take strike action. A full list of NHS employers who have voted to strike is available here.
A healthcare assistant was paid £7.13 an hour in 2012, nearly a whole £1 more than the £6.19 minimum wage at the time.
In response to the news, Nurses United have called for healthcare assistants to vote for strike action in the planned Unison ballot.
Lead Organiser Anthony Johnson said, “Anyone who works in our profession knows how hard and demanding it can be to be a healthcare assistant. Our colleagues and patients are using food banks. Our ambulances are queuing outside hospitals, and patients are waiting years for treatment.
Which makes it all the more stupid for Mr Hunt, the same one who caused the Junior Doctor strikes, to cut NHS pay so much in real terms. This shows why this Government does not value us. If they did, we would be offered a pay rise that brings our NHS back to safety. Instead, they’ve made thousands of healthcare workers question why they’re not working in a supermarket for the same wage.”
Yesterday the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) told Health Secretary Steve Barclay he had just five days to come to the negotiating table to prevent strike action before Christmas.
In a letter to the health secretary following the Autumn Statement, RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive Pat Cullen said the Chancellor demonstrated that “the government remains unprepared to give my members the support they need at work and at home”.
“It is with regret that I write to say that unless our next meeting is formal pay negotiations, beginning within the next 5 days, we will be announcing the dates and locations of our December strike action.”
The RCN’s Fair Pay for Nursing campaign is calling for a pay rise of 5% above inflation (measured by RPI).
© 2019 NursingNotes.co.uk
© 2019 NursingNotes.co.uk
