Friday, September 08, 2006

Resistance is futile

I've been through a week's backlog of mail, including my Nursing Standard. Reading through it, I see that 90,000 NHS staff have still to be assimilated to the Agenda for Change payscale. That includes me. I was hoping to see my letter of notification amongst that mail backlog, but it didn't happen. Until I receive that letter, I can't get my hands on the arrears that have been building up since October 2004. Rumour has it, that there's a couple of thousand (£) waiting for us. (Cha-ching!)
All I hope is, that this is the last time they restructure the NHS wage structure, until after I retire, anyway, and that's a couple of decades away. It's been a major hassle. I don't think anyone foresaw how complicated an operation it was going to be. I feel the problem is one of trust. We have none! We feel the Government is out to shaft us with weasel words. Unless we nail them down with cast-iron guarantees, they'll wriggle out of any commitment, and sell us down the river. (How many mixed metaphors in that?) Last year's heckling of the Health Secretary, what's-her-face, at the RCN conference was merely a public manifestation of our mood.
How good a deal is AfC, if the doctors and senior managers don't want to be involved, anyway?

No comments: