No pay cuts in Derbyshire's NHS!

A temporary repreive appears to have been won in Derby, where nursing staff of all grades were threatened recently with pay cuts.

I attended a meeting in Derby a couple of weeks ago where nurses reported being forced to re-apply for their existing jobs, and having their job descriptions re-written, as the Trust tried to justify plans to 'review' the skill mix and pay grades for many hundreds of staff across the hospitals.

Southern Derbyshire Health UNISON, which had called the meeting, had registered an official dispute with the Trust, together with the RCN, and this does, at least, seem to have dragged the Trust back to the table for further talks. No changes will be made for the next three weeks, while talks continue.

The root of the dispute is the financial crisis the Trust finds itself in following becoming a Foundation Trust, and seeing Derby's NHS economy having to pay for an expensive PFI scheme. The hospitals are now struggling to balance their books, but rather than demand more money or more time from the Department of Health, the hospital managers have decided to try to squeeze the shortfall out of their hard working staff. Nursing staff at Derby's hospitals, who have long been 'multi-skilled' and work in developed and expanded roles, are now being told that they won't need to use all their skills (as though they could therefore leave some of them at home when they come to work), so won't merit their current pay grades.

For band 3 Health Care Assistants, this could mean a drop to band 2 and a possible 30% cut in pay. For many band 6 nurses, who are expected to run wards and departments in the absence of senior colleagues, they face being downgraded to band 5 - the grade allocated to newly qualified nurses. With only one year's pay protection on offer, the financial implications of such cuts would be massive.

New recruits into these jobs, of course, would not get the pay protection, so the jobs would be devalued from day one. Nurses fear that they will end up being pressurised into using their extended skills while only being paid for the basic grade, leading to patients receiving 'care on the cheap'.

Not only that, but if the Derby staff are down-graded, it could create a bandwagon that other NHS managers will be keen to jump on. Down the road in Leicestershire, we are fighting a number of issues around Agenda for Change pay outcomes, and the outcome of the Derby dispute could be critical.

The Trust should be in no doubt about the strength of feeling amongst UNISON members, though. At the end of the meeting I attended, there was a show of hands over whether the UNISON members present would be willing to take industrial action if it were necessary to force the hospital managers to drop their pay cuts plan. Over 200 hundred people were packed into the room, and not a single person voted no. If the message doesn't sink in to the managers over the next three weeks, they could well have a formal industrial action ballot on their hands.

I'm delighted to have been invited back up to Derby for a follow up meeting on Feb 12th, the same day as the next Health SGE meeting. I'll be hoping to hear news of a victory, but if not, the nursing staff in Derby will need, and deserve, the solidarity of every NHS worker in the country.