04.01.11
Saving for the future
Are large-scale job cuts going to be a feature of health service news this year – or will the trusts having to take such drastic measures be few and far between?
Compared to councils and police forces and most government departments, the annual savings the NHS needs to make are nowhere near as dramatic. We have not seen in the health service the near-daily announcements of hundreds or even thousands of workers hearing their jobs have gone or soon will do that we have been getting elsewhere in the public sector.
But is the announcement that 1,600 posts are to go at hospitals in the West Midlands part of the first wave of such culls? Nationwide more staff will surely go, and some talented people may never end up working in the health service as recruitment is cut back and vacancies unfilled.
It will be a few months yet until we get a real sense of what most trusts are thinking about their payroll over the next few years, especially with the rejection of the no-redundancies national framework which would have given job security at the expense of a further squeeze on pay.
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