20.05.15
Unsocial hours payments key battleground for seven-day NHS
David Cameron announcing his intention to follow through on his plans for a seven-day NHS has sparked a lot of debate and comment, most of it negative.
At a time of mounting deficits and an ever more thinly spread workforce the idea piling on more work, responsibility and cost sounds ridiculous to many.
What sounds even more ridiculous is Cameron saying that a seven-day NHS could be achieved without additional cost.
In a speech on Monday he said: “This isn’t about NHS staff working seven days a week. It’s about different shift patterns – so that our doctors and nurses are able to give that incredible care whenever it is needed.”
After the speech he also claimed that it could be done without additional cost.
“Will it be easy to achieve? Of course not,” he continued. “Will it require a lot of hard work to put it in place? Yes, it will. But it’s definitely the right ambition and people shouldn’t automatically assume that working something on a seven-day-a-week basis means it’s more expensive.”
So how is he going to achieve this massive expansion of services without additional cost or additional work for current staff?
Cameron is not saying. And the reason is because it can’t be done.
At a bare minimum to increase services on evenings and weekends the government is going to have to cut the current unsocial hours payments that NHS workers receive, otherwise the salary bill will rocket.
Unions are already preparing for battle, and rightly so. It’s clear where Hunt and Cameron are going to attack, even if they are not yet willing to admit it.
Unison has warned that it would ballot its members on strike action if a seven-day-a-week NHS operation was to be funded by cutting staff pay, while Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, told the Independent that nurses will strike if the government tries to cut pay to deliver the seven-day NHS.
“I would particularly give a really strong warning to [health secretary Jeremy Hunt]: any attacks on unsocial hours, weekend working payments, would be strongly resisted,” he said. “While we don’t want industrial action, I do feel that for nurses that would be a red line.”
So in the battle for the seven-day NHS the victim yet again will be patients and services. As the government attempts to take away unsocial hours payments, and the workers revolt and walk out, who will be left to provide even the current level of service?
Maybe that’s the question Cameron should be asking.
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