How much should nurses be paid?

After recent headlines about all non-EU workers earning under £35k being deported, it is clear the nursing workforce will be affected by this drop in the number of nurses in the UK.

Nurses start work on £21,692 and only very few will ever reach the £35k figure,

So how much do you think nurses should be paid?

You've associated privatisation with a reduction in service.

How do you rate the GPs service?

Those individuals wont make it past the interview process

Privatisation and reduction of quality and services go hand in hand. I havent seen my gp in nearly 5 years. His surgery was very overstretched and he never had the funds to maintain a practice nurse.

You still havent addressed the fact OTs and physios receive the same benefits as nurses. Why this deep seated hate for nurses

Over the years an increasing number of services within the NHS have been privatised. In 2011 there were less than 400,000 nurses and midwives and now there are over 600,000. The quality of the NHS has eroded massively, and I love the NHS and I'm too young to know what it was like in the 70's, 80's, 90's etc, but I can only assume it was a lot better than it is now.

Nurses do get great benefits, but at the cost of a stagnant pay. And why do you consistently say nurses, when I have already told you OTs and physio's reap exactly the same benefits but also voice concerns over their low pay.
This would be a grown up debate if I debating with someone more mature.

GP services have been outsourced (privatised) since the inception of the NHS.

France has a joint public/private health service and is acknowledged as the best in Europe .

Good management ensures good service, and sadly theres no correlation between good management and public or private ownership .

What we have her is concerns of those involved in the welfare that they will somehow loose out or be held accountable , using fear tactics in order to get the general public to defend their own positions.

What benefits? Compared to a private sector professional job the only benefit, and it is a big one, is a DB pension. Plus, to be fair, well protected employment rights.

To give an idea my benefits as just a trainee are:

Life insurance at 5x salary (to go up as an associate)
Private medical insurance
Travel insurance
Bonus scheme
Free gym membership
Tech allowance (ie. Cost of a laptop, every year)
DC pension
Subsidised restaurant

Work phone, but to be honest that's a negative. If I worked for a company, rather than a firm, I'd get a share scheme and car to boot.

The government tells public sector staff they get better treatment, it's ******, but they've never worked in the private sector so know no better.

My placement trust is in central London, and none of the nurses I've worked with live within a 3 mile radius.

NHS is mostly tax paid, but it's still considered one of the best healthcare systems in the world. We have poor management, maybe complaining about inflated managers pay, but lower performing health services is more productive than complaining about nurse pay and benefits

I will not doubt that the NHS is good value for money. Neither will I defend the incredibly top heavy management structure within the NHS.

Nobody is expecting services to suffer and they're not really.

Do you drive a car on the motorway?

I can just about afford paying my bills, how could I afford a car. It's my own fault for doing nursing

All the nurses I know own cars.

When you drive along the motorway you'll see 'highways agencys' vehicles going up and down the motorway keeping the traffic moving.

That job was done by the police many years ago. When they privatised it the sky was going to fall in, the motorway network was going to grind to a halt and the death rate would sky rocket. None of those happened , yet the claims were spread by those who were scared for their jobs.

NHS workers get decent benefits. Maternity pay, sick pay, paid leave, regular annual leaves, pensions (can be attacked), LOTS of discounts for rail, restaurants, food, even housing. But most importantly, nurses have stability in their profession. A lot of other careers are interchangeable and can be outsourced, but nursing is a profession that can't be taken over by a lower paid international worker etc.

Most of of those things are rights, not perks. We have maternity and sick pay because it is illegal not to do so, admittedly I don't get to use all my annual leave but that is unusual and unique to the City, most professionals will.

Discounts are nice, but other professions can do those things anyway because they get paid enough. I'd rather have 20% extra on my salary as a bonus than 20% off trains. And transport is usually funded anyway, my firm pays for 70% of the cost of my Oyster.

I used to work in an Employment dept. which worked for some NHS Trusts, and the perks on offer were nothing like what our private sector clients offered professional and senior staff. The public sector is much better to work in as unskilled, low paid staff, but that's not a concern for nurses.

I'm not aware of any liberal professions being outsourced, there's hardly a glut of unemployed lawyers and accountants. Some of the back office stuff like HR and IT might be, but they're not professions.

I can understand why you might think that if you've never worked in a corporate environment, but when employers compete for staff they tend to offer a lot more perks than when they're a monopoly.

Before I started my nursing degree I used to work as an office assistant in the Midlands largest law firm. I always wanted to be a lawyer, and I thought this was my one way ticket to great experience. I really hated working there. People in law are so awful to each other. It's a very cut throat environment and it is quite easy to lose your job. About a year after I left they merged with another law firm, and over all 10% of jobs were lost from that merger. I stand by my statement, nursing may not be the easiest career or have the best perks but it will always have stability and I'd rather have a job than a 20% discount at Nando's

After recent headlines about all non-EU workers earning under £35k being deported, it is clear the nursing workforce will be affected by this drop in the number of nurses in the UK.
Nurses start work on £21,692 and only very few will ever reach the £35k figure,
So how much do you think nurses should be paid?

More than footballers.

Saving lives > Sport

Nurses don't save lives. And if they did, demand and supply will never allow nurses to be paid more than they are

Not directly but they do assist the doctors in doing so:

"They protect patients from the risks and consequences of illness, disability, and infirmity, as well as from the risks and consequences of the treatment of illness. They also protect patients from the risks that occur when illness and vulnerability make it difficult, impossible, or even lethal for patients to perform the activities of daily living -- ordinary acts like breathing, turning, going to the toilet, coughing, or swallowing."