The statement outlines the National Committee’s position on this year’s pay award, why they themselves as NHS managers are voting Yes to industrial action and why they are urging all members to do the same.

The industrial action ballot is being run by UNISON. As MiP members share membership with both UNISON and the FDA, they are entitled to vote in relevant ballots held by our partner unions. Therefore all MiP members on Agenda for Change terms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are eligible to participate in this ballot. 

The ballot will close on 25 November.

For more information on the ballot, please visit UNISON’s dedicated NHS pay website here.

MiP National Committee Joint Statement on NHS Pay and Industrial Action

In July this year, the National Committee for Managers in Partnership made an important decision to support the balloting of our members and to recommend that our members vote in favour of industrial action. As ballot papers begin to arrive with our members, we want to explain our position clearly and we want to encourage every member of MiP to vote Yes. 

First, we want to make one thing absolutely clear: we do not want to go on strike. We do not think that any of our members in management or any of our colleagues in health and social care want to go on strike. We believe that the current situation in our sector is so dire that we must bring the government to the table to negotiate with us to improve the deal they have imposed on us all. We believe that the only way to bring the Government to the negotiating table is to vote in support of industrial action and, if necessary, to go on strike. 

To understand how bad the situation in health and social care is, we can turn to the latest Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, who was chair of the Health And Social Care Committee in July 2022 when the Committee published a new report on workforce. The first paragraph of the report is worth repeating here in full:

“The National Health Service and the social care sector are facing the greatest workforce crisis in their history. As of September 2021, the NHS was advertising 99,460 vacant posts: for social care, it was 105,000. New research by the Nuffield Trust suggests that the NHS in England could be short right now of 12,000 hospital doctors and over 50,000 nurses and midwives. The number of people on a waiting list for hospital treatment rose to a record of nearly 6.5 million in April 2022, and the 18-week target for treatment has not been met since 2016. Yet demand on the health and social care sector continues to grow relentlessly with an extra 475,000 jobs needed in health and 490,000 jobs needed in social care by the early part of the next decade.”

We agree with the Health and Social Care Committee. We are in the midst of the greatest workforce crisis in our history and at a time when we have overwhelming levels of demand for our services. Most of that demand has been predictable for decades as our population has gradually aged and we have got better at saving lives so that people live longer. A significant amount of that demand is happening as a result of the pandemic, as we deal with long-Covid and the huge backlogs across all our services. All of that demand requires well-trained, well-motivated and well-looked after people to deliver the services that our population need. 

The bottom line is, we will not be able to recruit and retain enough people in health and social care if pay, terms and conditions are not good enough. The current deal is not good enough. It is not attractive enough to bring new people into our services and it amounts to a significant real terms pay cut for everyone in the NHS. It does nothing at all to improve terms and conditions – like addressing fair pay for overtime and the structure of the pay bands. 

Our members, who are all on the same pay bands as clinical colleagues like matrons, specialist allied health professionals and heads of clinical departments, have received a pay increase between 1.3% and 2.9%. This is against inflation rates of more than 10%. We fully supported colleagues on the lowest pay bands getting the biggest increases, but the deal still isn’t good enough for any of us. NHS staff in full-time jobs are struggling to make ends meet. In September 2022, The Times reported that a quarter of NHS hospitals have now set up food banks for their own staff.

Industrial action would be a very serious step to take and no one in the NHS would withdraw their labour for days of action unless the situation was as dreadful as it is now. We recognise that taking action would have an impact on the people we serve on those days. But we consider the alternative to be worse – accepting a bad pay deal which devalues and demoralises NHS staff to the point where thousands more staff just leave, withdrawing their labour permanently. 

We have just had a summer that has been as bad as any winter in the NHS. We are already at a stage where ambulances are not getting to emergency calls fast enough, where people cannot see their GP soon enough, where diagnosis of serious conditions is happening too late and treatment is taking far too long. Every new vacancy puts patients at greater risk and puts the staff left behind under greater pressure making it more likely that others will burn out and leave too. We are in a dangerous spiral and we cannot pull out of it without a decent deal on pay. Taking action for a better deal could convince thousands of staff to stay in their jobs. We have to act. 

Perhaps we should put this in terms that our Government will understand. We have a Government that is supposed to be prioritising economic growth. How does it help the economy to grow if we have more than 6 million people on NHS waiting lists? People can’t work when they’re sick. At the time of writing, the current line-up in the Cabinet is still planning to remove the cap on banker’s bonuses. We say that investing in NHS staff is much stronger investment in the British economy – for the millions of pounds that our million-plus workforce will spend, and for the many millions of people that the NHS can get well enough and keep well enough to work and live a fulfilling life. 

We encourage all our members to vote Yes for industrial action. For better pay for NHS staff, vote Yes. To show solidarity with your NHS colleagues, vote Yes. To have NHS services that can recruit and retain staff, vote Yes. To send the government a strong message to bring it to the negotiating table, vote Yes. If you can’t take action but you want your colleagues to be able to, vote Yes. For your family and your friends who need the NHS to be there for them, vote Yes.

As managers we do our best for the NHS when we work side-by-side with the cooks, cleaners, dentists, doctors, midwives, nurses, optometrists, orthotists, paramedics, porters, radiographers, scientists, secretaries, therapists and all the dedicated people in our services. We stand with all our colleagues now in calling for industrial action to bring this Government to the table to negotiate a better deal for us all.

Signed,
National Committee
Managers In Partnership 

ENDS