Health trade unions in Northern Ireland have met with the region’s health minister for the first engagement regarding pay for 2024/25.
They explained that the lack of clarity and certainty surrounding the pay uplift for Agenda for Change staff working in health and social care was creating “frustration”, particularly as “time is ticking”.
Pay increases were due from April 2024, but delays mean that health staff in Northern Ireland continue to be almost a year behind other parts of the UK.
No assurance on pay
Health minister Mike Nesbitt left the unions “in no doubt’ that there is an ongoing deficit in funding available for the health service in Northern Ireland. Despite his wish that pay parity be maintained, he explained it has become “exceedingly difficult” for the health department to offer any assurance on pay.
Silence from the UK Treasury on additional funding for 2024 means that the last word from the new Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, is that there will be no new money.
Health unions stressed to the minister that this simply will not do.
Even if the UK October budget includes additional health funding, the NI executive will be forced to spend 2025 money in 2024, thereby perpetuating the problem.
Leandre Archer, head of industrial relations at the SoR, said: "Again, SoR members in Northern Ireland are the poor relations with all other regions in the UK receiving their pay award. This is not good enough, back in 2019 health workers were promised pay parity with England and they rightly expect and deserve it.
"If their pay is not quickly aligned to other regions in the UK we will see the continued movement of our radiography workforce to other areas, whether this is to the South of Ireland where there is a significant increased pay differential or to other areas of England, Scotland and Wales.
"Not only that, health professionals do not want to be on picket lines during another winter which only costs the services more in the long run. If the government is serious about dealing with the workforce crisis and waiting lists they need to find a way to fund the pay award without delay. Our members deserve better."
Exacerbating workforce pressure
The trade unions told the minister that the entire NI executive should remember its commitment in “New Decade New Approach”, an agreement negotiated on January 9 2020 which restored the government of the Northern Ireland Executive after a three-year hiatus, wherein it promised that pay parity for health and social care staff would not be broken.
Health workers are choosing to move elsewhere to work in the NHS, the unions added, exacerbating current workforce pressures.
Diminishing involvement of prior consultation on a co-design, co-production basis between departmental officials and the trade unions is only further compounding the growing frustration of membership, they continued.
The meeting concluded with an agreement that the collective trade unions would return to meet the minister in November after the UK budget is published.
Health trade unions included UNISON, the Royal College of Nursing, the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance (NIPSA), UNITE, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, the Royal College of Midwives, and the Society of Radiographers.
(Image: Health minister Mike Nesbitt, by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)