Bristol hospitals face a “real risk” that staff will go on strike this summer and into autumn over pay, says the new man in charge of the BRI. Unions including the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) – the profession’s biggest union – and Unite are balloting hundreds of thousands of NHS workers nationally, urging members to vote for industrial action to protest a “miserable” salary offer.
Eugine Yafele, chief executive of University Hospitals Bristol & Weston NHS Trust (UHBW), which runs the Bristol Royal Infirmary, the Children’s Hospital and Weston General, told a meeting of its board that the Government had accepted the recommendations of the NHS pay review bodies but the increases were not fully funded. He said: “We have between a three to five per cent pay award proposed for non-medical staff and up to nine per cent for medics.
“As yet we’re waiting for the advisory notices in terms of how we implement the pay award. As ever the greatest risk at the moment is if trade unions reject the pay offer and the real risk around industrial action over the summer and into the autumn.
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“But we cannot move on this unless we receive those advisory notices.” His report to the meeting on Tuesday, August 9, said: “The NHS Pay Review Body, the Doctor and Dentist Review Body and Senior Service Review Body have made recommendations to the Government on the annual pay awards which have been accepted in full.
“These awards offer most Agenda for Change colleagues a pay award of £1,400 or four per cent. The basic award will be a more significant pay rise for lower paid staff who will receive circa nine per cent.
“Medics will receive pay rises of 4.5 per cent and very senior managers and executive up to 3.5 per cent. The pay uplifts amount to an additional circa five per cent investment in the overall NHS pay bill.
“However, NHS England has only been allocated enough money in its budgets to cover a three per cent investment in pay increases for staff. Unless the extra investment cost is funded by the Treasury, this will have to be drawn from existing budgets.
“The trust will await pay advisory notices regarding implementation. The greatest risk relating to the pay awards lies with the likelihood of trade unions rejecting the offer and moving to ballot for industrial action.”
The RCN ballot, which will ask members in NHS England and Wales on Agenda for Change contracts to agree to a walkout, opens on September 15 for four weeks. It says the four per cent rise is far below inflation and would leave staff £1,000 a year worse off in real terms.
A ballot of Unite the union NHS members is already underway and closes on September 11. The Society of Radiographers has called the NHS pay offer a “serious miscalculation” and is planning to consult members.
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