Unions in the public sector have threatened to go on strike despite above-inflation pay rises being announced yesterday.
The government confirmed it had accepted the recommendations from pay review bodies, granting pay rises of between 3.25% and 4.5% for the 2025-26 salary year.
But a number of unions have claimed the pay offer is not enough to address recruitment and retention crises, or to address long-term below-inflation pay increases.
Philip Banfield, chair of the British Medical Association, has indicated that the offer to doctors is “woefully inadequate”. The BMA believes doctors’ pay is still around a quarter less than it was in real terms 16 years ago.
Public sector pay
The rises offered yesterday mean that resident doctors (formerly junior doctors) will receive 5.4%, doctors 4% and nurses and other health care staff on Agenda for Change contracts, 3.6%.
“Today’s ‘award’ takes us backwards, pushing pay restoration even further into the distance without a government plan or reassurance to correct this erosion of what a doctor is worth,” he said.
“No one wants a return to scenes of doctors on picket lines – we’d rather be in hospitals, GP practices or in the community seeing patients – but today’s actions from the government have sadly made this look far more likely.”
Nicola Ranger, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, urged members to vote in an upcoming consultation on whether the 3.6% uplift is enough.
She said: “Nursing staff have suffered 15 years of pay erosion and this award is symptomatic of a broken system which erodes our pay each year and keeps nursing staff weighted to the bottom.
“Now, hundreds of thousands of our members in the NHS will be given a vote on this award. They will ultimately decide if it is enough and whether they feel valued.
“By attaching themselves to a failed pay review body process and refusing to enter direct talks with unions, ministers ignored the nursing workforce crisis and charted the course for it to deepen.”
The British Dental Association called the pay uplift a “paper pay rise” that would not cover the mounting costs facing dentists or the “exodus” from NHS dentistry.
“The reality is they won’t see anything like this, unless ministers cover the mounting cost of care,” said general dental practice committee chair Shiv Pabary.
“Without real change, practices will remain stuck delivering NHS work at a loss and the exodus from this service will continue.”
Schools and teachers
The National Education Union had previously indicated that it would ballot for strike action if the offer presented no additional funding or if the offer was “unacceptable”.
The 4% rise presented yesterday was offered alongside £615 million in additional funding for schools, but schools will be expected to find around 1% of the rise through cost savings.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, said of the offer: “While we acknowledge and welcome additional funding to that initially offered by government, it is still the case that the pay award is not fully funded.
“In many schools, this will mean cuts in service provision to children and young people, job losses, and additional workloads for an already overstretched profession.
“The NEU will never accept cuts to education. Children deserve a fully-resourced education and government should see education as an investment in the country’s future, not a cost.”
Kebede said that unless the government tackled “system-level” issues such as capping CEO pay and other “wastage” caused by the academisation of schools, NEU members would take action.
“Unless the government commits to fully funding the pay rise then it is likely that the NEU will register a dispute with the government on the issue of funding, and campaign to ensure every parent understands the impact of a cut in the money available to schools, and that every politician understands this too,” he added.
Earlier this week, the Office for National Statistics confirmed that CPI inflation had increased to 3.5% in the year to April, outstripping median pay awards for the first time in 19 months. However, the retail prices index, the inflation measure preferred by unions, rose to 4.5%.
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