Received from: SoR
Below inflation and below average pay awards have become a permanent scar across the public sector since Austerity. This is a symptom and cause of the workforce crisis that is undermining services to the public.
On average there is a 21 per cent gap between the rise in national average earnings and NHS professionals’ pay since 2008. There is a similar story across our schools, prison and probation services, local authorities and social services and blue light services.
Under-investment in pay has created a workforce crisis which is impacting on service users every day. In the NHS, failure to invest in radiography staff to meet known future demand has created waiting lists that mean people are suffering for longer and dying unnecessarily because there are insufficient staff to diagnose and treat them. Reducing waiting lists is supposedly our government’s top priority – but their answer to a shortage of high skilled professional workforce is to lower their relative pay. This incentivises more to leave than stay, lowering morale and fuelling the working practices that are unsafe for staff and patients. The only ones guaranteed inflation proof pay rises are those who leave with pensions indexed linked by law.
Congress calls on TUC to:
i. support and promote an index-linked pay restoration guarantee for public servants in work
ii. work with government to secure stable, long term funding support for our public services, supported by independent, transparent auditing and reporting on staffing levels and capacity against known and forecast demand.
Society of Radiographers