By Lucy Phillips
14 December 2009
Health unions have indicated that they are open to the idea of NHS workers being given job guarantees in exchange for lower pay deals and workplace mobility.
This month, Health Secretary Andy Burnham announced that the government would consult unions and NHS Employers, the organisation representing the health service on workforce issues, on the ‘pros and cons of offering frontline staff an employment guarantee locally or regionally in return for flexibility, mobility and sustained pay restraint’.
The move was outlined in a five-year strategy for the health service called NHS 2010–2015: from good to great – preventative, people centred, productive, published on December 10. ‘This may require tough choices for staff, including working in a different place or in a different organisation. It will also require a joint commitment to ensure tight control of the total pay bill,’ the document says.
While the chancellor said in last week’s Pre-Budget Report that spending on frontline services in the NHS would be protected, the health service must still achieve at least £15bn of efficiency savings over the next three years.
Josie Irwin, head of employment relations at the Royal College of Nursing, told Public Finance: ‘In principle we welcome the possibility of an employment guarantee but we now wait to explore the practicalities and what it means in reality.’
She said trade-offs between ‘pay restraint and jobs’ were inevitable given the scale of savings the NHS had to make. ‘The problems are so severe there are bound to be some trade-offs and we will want to explore trade-offs that are not detrimental to our members, and at the end of the day to providing good quality patient care,’ she said. She also welcomed the government’s commitment to find a joint solution.
A spokeswoman for Unison told PF that the union was calling for meetings with the Department of Health to get further detail on the proposals before making any judgement over whether it was going to benefit staff or not. But she added: ‘These are difficult times. We have said in the past we don’t want our members paying the price for the recession but on the other hand the DoH have got some ideas that we would explore with them.’
Sian Thomas, director of NHS Employers, said ‘tough choices will need to be made’ and urged health service leaders to explore every alternative before making redundancies. ‘Employment guarantees, whether locally or regionally offered in return for other concessions such as pay restraint or mobility, is one area to look at but, as the report identifies, partnership working and staff engagement also have a vital role to play and this also brings with it plenty of opportunities for employers,’ she added.
The British Medical Association condemned the strategy’s ‘repeated talk of pay restraint’ as ‘demoralising’ when it meant no pay rise at all. ‘While health care workers clearly understand the financial pressures on the NHS, and will want to act responsibly, they should not be punished for a situation, that is not of their making,’ said BMA chair Dr Hamish Meldrum.
14 December 2009
Health unions have indicated that they are open to the idea of NHS workers being given job guarantees in exchange for lower pay deals and workplace mobility.
This month, Health Secretary Andy Burnham announced that the government would consult unions and NHS Employers, the organisation representing the health service on workforce issues, on the ‘pros and cons of offering frontline staff an employment guarantee locally or regionally in return for flexibility, mobility and sustained pay restraint’.
The move was outlined in a five-year strategy for the health service called NHS 2010–2015: from good to great – preventative, people centred, productive, published on December 10. ‘This may require tough choices for staff, including working in a different place or in a different organisation. It will also require a joint commitment to ensure tight control of the total pay bill,’ the document says.
While the chancellor said in last week’s Pre-Budget Report that spending on frontline services in the NHS would be protected, the health service must still achieve at least £15bn of efficiency savings over the next three years.
Josie Irwin, head of employment relations at the Royal College of Nursing, told Public Finance: ‘In principle we welcome the possibility of an employment guarantee but we now wait to explore the practicalities and what it means in reality.’
She said trade-offs between ‘pay restraint and jobs’ were inevitable given the scale of savings the NHS had to make. ‘The problems are so severe there are bound to be some trade-offs and we will want to explore trade-offs that are not detrimental to our members, and at the end of the day to providing good quality patient care,’ she said. She also welcomed the government’s commitment to find a joint solution.
A spokeswoman for Unison told PF that the union was calling for meetings with the Department of Health to get further detail on the proposals before making any judgement over whether it was going to benefit staff or not. But she added: ‘These are difficult times. We have said in the past we don’t want our members paying the price for the recession but on the other hand the DoH have got some ideas that we would explore with them.’
Sian Thomas, director of NHS Employers, said ‘tough choices will need to be made’ and urged health service leaders to explore every alternative before making redundancies. ‘Employment guarantees, whether locally or regionally offered in return for other concessions such as pay restraint or mobility, is one area to look at but, as the report identifies, partnership working and staff engagement also have a vital role to play and this also brings with it plenty of opportunities for employers,’ she added.
The British Medical Association condemned the strategy’s ‘repeated talk of pay restraint’ as ‘demoralising’ when it meant no pay rise at all. ‘While health care workers clearly understand the financial pressures on the NHS, and will want to act responsibly, they should not be punished for a situation, that is not of their making,’ said BMA chair Dr Hamish Meldrum.
