13.04.15
Withdrawing unsocial hours payments could lead to ‘mass unrest’, Unison warns
Unison has warned that potential plans to withdraw unsocial hours payments from health workers could lead to “mass unrest” and damage already “strained industrial relations”.
Speaking ahead of the trade union’s annual health conference in Liverpool, the organisation’s head of health, Christina McAnea, made the statement that the seven-day NHS must not cost staff a penny.
Earlier this year, the Department of Health revealed that NHS staff in England could lose their ‘unsocial hours’ payments for working evenings, nights and weekends under proposed changes aimed at reducing costs and introducing a 24/7 “modern NHS system”.
The plans, submitted as part of the Department of Health evidence to the NHS Pay Review Body, said: “The way that the week is separated into ‘plain time’ and ‘unsocial hours’ within Agenda for Change is archaic and out of line with a 24 hours, seven days a week, modern NHS system and most importantly, the needs of patients.”
It added that reformed employment contracts should put patients at the heart of everything the NHS does, rewarding staff that make the greatest contribution to patient care, and which provide premium pay rates that reflect modern employment practices better aligned to patient need, and more sustainable to support the NHS of the future.
As a result, unsocial hours payments promise to be a hot topic at the union’s annual health conference, with members debating motions calling for an industrial ballot if unsocial hours payments are cut.
McAnea said: “Five years of bitter experience has left health staff fearing the worst. We are warning any incoming government that any move to a seven-day NHS must not cost staff a penny.
“Staff want to work with their employers to improve and extend NHS services if this is based on patients’ needs, but not if it is driven by another cost-cutting exercise.
“Health workers sacrifice their weekends and nights to care for the sick and vulnerable, and it is only fair that they are rewarded for this extra effort. Many do these hours not by choice but because after five years and pay freezes and their wages being held down they need the money.”
The union stated that last year an Income Data Services report for the NHS unions showed that a third of NHS workers rely on unsocial hours payments to supplement their incomes. And almost three-quarters (71%) said they would not work at nights or weekends if unsocial hours rates were cut.
Even last week, a BMA survey of GPs highlighted that more than 90% of doctors do not feel practices should offer seven day opening in their own practices.
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