Nurses ‘may have to find new jobs’ after wages slashed Hospital staff hit out after taking pay cuts following merger of NHS trusts
NURSES working at the former Heart of England Trust have revealed their wages have been slashed following a merger with the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in April.
Some staff have had their hourly weekend rate reduced and their annual leave stopped in new contracts with the University Hospitals Trust (UHB).
Now ‘bank’ nurses at Good Hope, Solihull and Heartlands hospitals, who are temporary, flexible staff with regular shifts, say that the changes could force them out of the industry.
Many are single parents and say the cut in hourly rates means they could now be hundreds or possibly thousands of pounds a year worse off
Band 2 staff have seen their Sunday hourly rate cut from £17.11 per hour to £13.74 since August 1.
Band 5 nurses have seen rates cut from £23.06 to £21.23.
One nurse, who has been bank staff at Heart of England (HEFT) for more than 15 years, told the Post: their “It’s upsetting and morale is very low. We are doing the same job as before but being paid less.
“Before we would accrue annual leave, but now that has been taken away and subsided into our new lower wage. Nobody is happy about it, and some people have even talked about looking for work elsewhere. People are saying they would get better rates at Lidl.
“It’s counter productive as then the hospital will have to rely on agency staff, who are less familiar with the hospital systems, and ultimately it will be the patients who suffer.
“There’s a lot of bad feeling. It’s palpable. When you put in years and years of service to the trust it is a real blow when your wage is suddenly cut. A lot of the staff chose bank work so that they may have young children, be a single parent, or have an elderly parent to look after at home.
“These changes could make a very real detrimental effect.”
Another bank nurse at the trust has started an online petition to appeal to the hospital to uphold the previous wage. It has already gathered almost 1,000 signatures.
The petition states: “This could adversely effect single parents or families who opt to work weekends due to the high cost of child care during the working week.
“These changes will see an average reduction of £203 a month.
“Bank staff make up a huge amount of NHS workers and are used to fill short falls on the already severely understaffed wards.
“As staff we are constantly pushed to extremes with very little gratitude, but we continue to do so because we love our job.”
A spokesperson from UHB told the Post: “UHB, HEFT (pre-merger) and Birmingham Women’s and Childrens (BWC) agreed some time ago that there should be parity in pay rates for all internal bank staff across
It’s upsetting and morale is very low. We are doing the same job as before but being paid less Nurse
their hospitals, to offer a consistent approach for all employees, together. with a wider scope to undertake shifts at different locations which may better suit personal needs as an individual.
“The amalgamation was implemented a year ago within UHB and BWC and has seen a greater uptake of bank staff with less reliance on agency staff. From August 1 2018, the HGS sites [Heartlands, Good Hope and Solihull hospitals, post-merger] have also adopted the standardised rates which it is hoped will lead to a further reduction in reliance on agency staff.
“The bank staff are a valued and integral resource for the safe running of the merged UHB’s four hospitals.”