This is the text of a leaflet produced by the 4:1 Campaign for the NHS pay strike on November 24th. Download the leaflet here for printing and distributing on NHS picket lines.
The government’s pay cut is part of a determined policy to slash our salaries and reduce the cost of nursing in the NHS. It is part of the same strategy to marketise and privatise our priceless NHS. It is clear the government sees nurses as a cost to the NHS and not as a clinical resource with direct positive effect on patient outcomes and quality of care. NHS Trusts are chronically under-staffed all over the UK, thousands of vacancies are left unfilled and Trusts are replacing qualified nurses with health care assistants, all with the intention of reducing their costs at the expense of patient care and outcomes.
It is time we took action to stop the erosion of our salaries but it’s also time we took action against the chronic understaffing, the constant poor care scandals and the exhausting and demoralising conditions nurses are working in. We have taken the blame for poor care standards and have put up with atrocious staffing conditions for too long. We need minimum qualified nurse to patient ratios and we need them to be made law.
