A £50 MILLION pay offer for the State's 26,000 nurses is close to being finalised. The offer, representing an increase of at least £11 million on the one rejected by nurses last May, is expected to be issued by a special Government adjudication board late next week.
It had been expected that deliberations by the board would have concluded yesterday, but a number of minor issues remain. These are understood to include final details on management grades, particularly how best to compare pay rates of superintendent health nurses with those of directors of nursing. The new terms are expected to address some of the major concerns that led to nurses rejecting the last pay offer by a majority of eight to one. The biggest cost element in the new package involves bringing forward pay increases for ward sisters and psychiatric nursing officers (PNOs) from the year 2003 to this year and next.
Under the last deal, sisters would have seen long-service staff nurses earning up to £2,000 a year more for several years. The anomaly arose because credit for past service was recognised in calculating the new pay rates for staff nurses, but not for ward sisters and PNOs. This has now been redressed.
The proposal to introduce a new grade for entrants to nursing that paid £1,000 a year less than the existing entry scale is expected to be deferred from 1998 until 2000. While this will not satisfy all nurses who opposed the last deal because they are opposed on principle to younger nurses being paid less than the existing scale, the unions will argue that the deferment provides an opportunity to get rid of the new grade before it can be introduced. This may be possible when talks on a new pay deal take place after the expiry of the Programme for Competitiveness and Work.
Another area where the adjudication panel is expected to come down on the side of nurses is allowances for extra qualifications. In the May deal it had been proposed to continue paying the allowances to existing staff with the relevant qualifications but scrap the scheme for newly-qualifying staff. Although the amounts involved are small - about £300 a year nurses reacted angrily to their threatened withdrawal.
One major area of grievance where few concessions are expected in next week's adjudication is early retirement. Union and management representatives were taken by surprise at the strength of feeling nurses showed on this issue.
It is largely fuelled by the ageing profile of the profession and a realisation by today's nurses that, unlike their predecessors, they can expect to work until they are 65. A modest scheme offering an early retirement scheme to 600 nurses aged over 57 only added to their anger.
Some minor improvements may be given by the adjudication board. But the board is not expected to pre-empt the findings of the Government's pensions commission, due to report in two years.
Nurse tutors are another group expected to gain little from the adjudication. While a vocal and influential element within the profession, they are too small to significantly affect the ballot.
The total value of the new deal is estimated at around £50 million, a substantial increase on the May offer worth £37.5 million - not to mention the initial £10 million package proffered by the Government last year. Whether it is enough to defuse the militancy of last spring remains to be seen.