General Chat

400,000 health workers have gone on strike this morning over a 1% pay raise including for the first time midwifes. In England they came out at seven this morning till eleven in Northern Ireland they were coming out at eleven. In Wales they come under a different trust and are not coming out on strike but are supporting it. My daughter is a midwife in Wales she supports the strike so do I they work long hours for low pay. OUR NHS IS GREAT LETS FIGHT FOR IT

up the workers - NHS need to do some cuts with the top layer of men in suits - too many chiefs and nowhere near enough Indians - my dil is a psychiatric nurse working with the elderly - she and her colleagues are treated so badly and are so unappreciated

The majority of NHS workers are kind and committed to helping their patients. They certainly won't have taken this action without a lot of soul searching. I totally agree with AnnC...... too many chiefs and not enough indians. We need our NHS to survive, so well done to them all for making such a bold statement today. I just hope the powers that be will listen and provide the much needed support and give the NHS workers the help that they certainly deserve.

It is a scandalous situation when nurses, midwifes, ambulance personnel, and other front line health workers, have to resort to strike action over being refused a !% pay rise - while thousands of non clinical staff are raking in £100K or more a year - David Cameron, George Osborne, and Jeremy Hunt should hsng their heads in shame a what is happening in the NHS :-|

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards/board/general_chat/thread/1345567

Whilst I have some sympathy with the really low paid, public sector workers do have to accept that automatic pay rises are a thing of the past. Many parts of the private sector abolished them twenty years ago to be replaced entirely by performance and scale related pay rises which is really what all this is about.

Figures would indicate that only around 8,000 NHS staff earn over £100k a year and this includes consultants as well as administrators, so given that the NHS employs over one and a half million people, the percentage of high earners is actually insignificant.

What I do find more concerning is the fact that less than 50% of all NHS employees are clinically trained. Surely the figure should be more like 75%.

Too many are still just getting by from day to day, and from week to week.

Economic betrayal is the current UK norm. Existing, rather than living.

But MPs pay is to go up as they don't earn enough to do their jobs properly ?????????????? :-(