In a time and place where everyone appears to be sold on the idea of borrowing money to live—mortgages, car loans, credit cards, and even financing for kitchen appliances—I prefer to use the money I work so hard for and actually earn my keep. This means that while it feels like everyone is always asking, why rent when you can own?; I find myself asking, why own when you can rent?
One of the reasons for this is simple, yet may not be immediately obvious. When we crunch numbers in terms of our expenses and income, inflation must be taken into account. The numbers by themselves don't mean much. This is why although I am renting an apartment, I live in a city with a rent cap, and my rent goes up much slower than inflation—meaning, my rent essentially goes down over time.
Now the media recently widely reported a pay rise for NHS staff in a rather celebratory tone. Of course a pay rise should be exciting—particularly after the coalition government's pay freeze, followed by years of a 1% pay cap stemming from a certain £22 billion efficiency savings target announced in the 2011 Health and Social Care Bill after a white paper that claimed to be ‘Liberating the NHS.’ However, a 6.5% pay rise over 3 years (which is performance-based), when the inflation rate is expected to reach 9.6% is not a pay rise—but a (‘real-terms’) pay cut dressed up. And to add insult to injury, this comes after the initial (and thankfully now scrapped) proposal for a pay rise only if you give up a day of your annual leave.
Emergency care professionals are being expected to take on increasingly extended scopes of practice, picking up slack from other areas of the NHS, and are being multi-skilled to no end; yet the compensation doesn't seem to align with this upward trend. Paramedics and other emergency practitioners are working highly unsociable hours, often waiting with patients outside of hospitals for hours on end, and are even vulnerable to being assaulted by the very people they are there to care for.
There is no doubt that the pay deal is simply not enough.
Having said this, it is a necessary step forward from the pay cap of recent years. And those at the lowest ends of their pay scale stand to benefit the most from the pay deal, with newly qualified paramedics receiving up to 29% over the 3 years. The 6.5% over the 3 years is for those who are already at the top of their pay scale.
However, it must be acknowledged that those at the top of their pay scale are also the same people who have been doing this invaluable work for the longest period of time—you have seniority, you have poured your ‘blood, sweat and tears’ into this role. Yet you are the ones essentially taking a pay cut if the pay deal is accepted, after many years of the same—all while your junior colleagues just making their entry into paramedic practice receive their pay rises.
No one can claim that is fair.
However, more than £4 billion is being freed up in order to pay for the pay deal— and while it is not enough for the work you do, it could perhaps be considered a baby step in the right direction.
July will after all mark 70 years since the inception of the NHS. Let's hope this denotes the beginning of a series of gradual sustainable improvements so that when the NHS turns 75, and then 80, you will actually feel like celebrating.