COALITION ministers have announced a basic 1% pay rise for the public sector, in reality a wage cut with CPI inflation running at 2%.
However, 600,000 nurses and other staff who receive ‘progression-in-job’ increases, as they develop their skills, will get a 0% rise.
Hunt, the arrogant Health Secretary, intensified the anger of public sector workers with his claim, supported by Cameron, that any more money than he was offering would result in tens of thousands of workers getting the sack.
The main health service unions in England said they would consult members on taking industrial action.
The NHS pay review body had recommended that all NHS staff should get a 1% pay rise, whether they were also entitled to progression pay increases or not. This was vetoed by Hunt.
The main trade unions in their response confined their possible industrial action responses to the health sector alone.
Unite said yesterday it will be consulting its health service members on possible industrial action, following health secretary Hunt’s ‘divide and rule’ refusal to sanction the recommended one per cent pay rise for all NHS staff.
The GMB trade union said it will consulting its members ‘on the next stage of this dispute’.
Rehana Azam, GMB National Officer for the NHS, said: ‘GMB members across the country will take the blocking of a full 1% pay rise as a personal insult.
‘GMB members will not stand aside whilst the government makes such direct attacks on their pay and conditions.
‘GMB will immediately begin making arrangements to consult members who will be asked to vote in a consultative ballot to decide the next steps in this dispute.’
She added: ‘NHS England continues to produce underspends, so billions are paid back to the Treasury for deficit reduction. Any underspend should go back into the NHS to improve services, so GMB doesn’t accept the arguments that a full 1% pay rise is unaffordable.
‘This new dispute is in addition to the suspended industrial action ballot in the Ambulance Service whilst discussions are on-going with employers over attempts to cut ambulance staff sick pay by up to 25%.’
Unite said that Hunt’s decision will see about 45 per cent of the NHS workforce getting no cost-of-living pay increase at all from 1st April.
Unite stressed that the incremental increases were in recognition of increased skills as staff progressed in their careers – and was not part of the annual pay rise process.
Unison Head of Health, Christina McAnea, said: ‘This coalition government has taken a scalpel to the Pay Body’s report and won’t escape the anger of NHS staff. It’s a disgrace that 70% of nurses and midwives will not even get a pay rise this year.’
She added: ‘The government has shown complete contempt for the NHS, contempt for staff and contempt for patients and will pay the price at the ballot box.’
Unison stressed: ‘Even a straight 1% increase would be nowhere near enough to meet the massive cost-of-living increases that NHS staff have had to cope with since 2010. Staff are, on average, 10% worse off than when the coalition came to power.’
McAnea slammed ‘the government’s contemptible decision to deny any pay increase for two years to staff entitled to an increment’.
Jon Skewes, director for policy, employment relations and communication at the Royal College of Midwives, said: ‘This amounts to a pay cut, pure and simple, and it is not good enough. Midwives are angry about this. It is yet another body-blow to NHS staff facing rising pressures and working ever harder without any reward. Midwives have been struggling to cope with years of rising prices and stagnant wages.’
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: ‘It is “national destroy public sector morale day” today as the government announces a further cut in the living standards of public sector workers, despite the economic recovery.
‘NHS staff have been singled out for particularly harsh treatment, at a time when they are already facing a funding crisis, staff cuts, privatisation and top-down restructuring.’
