If we were paid what we deserve, everyone would benefit. That’s why we won’t take this lying down
“We owe you more than words can say,” the prime minister told my colleagues on International Nurses Day last year. He said we were modern-day Florence Nightingales, and thanked us for what we were doing in the pandemic. Clearly, talk is cheap – and in this case not just cheap, but free. Because although the government is claiming to be thanking nurses in England for our hard work with a 3% pay rise, that increase turns out to be a cut.
That’s because the cost of living is going up for everyone – but also because the cost of being a nurse is soaring too. Registration fees with the Nursing and Midwifery Council, which we all have to pay, have increased, but it’s little things too. I’m a mental health nurse, and new rules mean we now wear uniforms, which have to be specially laundered. Every working day I’m running a hot wash just for my uniform, which could have Covid-carrying particles on it, and naturally that means every day my energy bill goes that little bit higher.
That’s just one way that the pandemic has made the issue of poor pay so much worse. Childcare has become increasingly expensive, and with kids in nursery being put in bubbles which then have to attend at specific times, shift workers are left often needing flexible childcare they can’t afford. These things make the cost of being a nurse so high.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3BAh2vM
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