News

Local pay isn’t helping low paid NHS staff

NHS Trusts are importing the worst, rather than the best, of private sector employment practices, resulting in poor morale and deteriorating industrial relations, according to new research.

A report from the Centre for Industrial Relations at Keele University says that the results of a survey of staff-side negotiators raise serious questions over the claimed benefits of local pay.

The research found that many trusts were dragging their heels over pay, refusing to enter serious negotiations with staff representatives, and that more than one in ten trusts had tried to impose a settlement without agreement.

The author of the report, Dr Carole Thornley, says that the evidence to date suggests that local pay will not have the advantages which the government has claimed. For example, the Health Departments have argued that local pay will lead to ‘fairness in pay systems’ and will ‘iron out inequities between different staff groups’.

But the survey found that nine out of ten trusts set a single percentage increase across all staff groups, ruling out the possibility of extra help for those on low pay.

Staff negotiators report that regional cartels of trusts seem to be forming to agree the set pay increases, suggesting that human resource directors themselves have little enthusiasm for ‘local flexibility’ in pay.

One reason may be the amount of time and energy which local pay negotiation requires. One staff representative commented: ‘It is extremely time consuming for both sides and overall must be costing the NHS millions.’

The research also suggests that the new staff group of health care assistants, who have never been subject to national pay bargaining, are particularly likely to havetheir pay imposed rather than negotiated. Basic starting salaries for health care assistants are low compared with the nationally-set Whitley rates: 43 per cent of staff negotiators report that the starting salary is less than £7,000 per year.

‘The growing importance of this poorly-paid group has serious implications for inequality in the NHS’, said Dr Thornley. ‘The findings of the survey will do little to reassure staff that “local pay” does not mean “low pay”.’