Oh my Blog!!!

I recently had thee most diplomatic dressing down from our WebMaster the other day for not posting on my blog, or sending him information to keep our website up to date.
Imagine my embarrassment to discover it's been a year since I last blogged!!!

And what a year it's been!!

We have been campaigning against our Trust Board's decision to privatise 10% of your local hospitals services. Despite a vigorous and noisy campaign, the Trust Board is going to announce on 28th March which company has won the bid to run the entire Estates and Facilities department at NUHT.

We will no doubt be meeting with the 'preferred provider' very soon so they can give us the details of how they intend to make this contract work and what that actually means for our members.

Also this week the Government announced their latest 'pay' offer to NHS staff.
This amounted to a 1% increase but only for the 40% of staff that are at the top of their pay banding! and only for those in England! The details of this offer will be available on our website next week.

When I read that the offer was 1% I thought there had been a typo, as I had remembered that there was talk of an 11% pay rise but when I did a bit more research this was what the MP's Pay Review Body was recommending for them, which they are implementing in full!!
So 1% for less than half the NHS staff, compared with 11% for MPs.
(don't even get me started on the Bankers bonuses!!)

So much for the notion that 'we are all in this together'.