The Welsh Government has offered an amended pay deal for nurses and other NHS staff after further strikes by nursing staff.
This offer, which relates to the non-pay aspects of the deal agreed in May, includes reinforced pledges to investigate a 36-hour working week for all NHS staff, reducing agency usage, and more than a dozen other proposals.
It comes after the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Wales and Society of Radiographers (SoR) remained in dispute with the government over the deal, which was implemented after other unions voted in favour of accepting it.
Members of RCN Wales then went back out on strike in June but paused its scheduled July action after the government agreed to meet again for talks.
RCN Wales will now ballot its members from Monday, 31 July to Thursday, 31 August on whether they wish to accept this new deal.
The union is not making a recommendation either way on whether its members should vote to accept or reject it.
What is in the Welsh Government offer for nurses?
The amendments add extra detail and timelines to the existing non-pay commitments in the 2023-24 deal, and include:
- Working group on the establishment of a 36-hour working week for all NHS staff to be set up, with a report by Autumn 2023. If a 36-hour working week is feasible, affordable, and an “agreed partnership priority”, the working group will publish a plan by March 2024 setting out a timeline for the implementation of this without a loss of earnings.
- NHS role profiles and job descriptions to be reviewed, with an NHS Employers working group set up to plan how job descriptions can be reviewed every three years. Update due on this by end of 2023.
- Working group with NHS Employers established in October 2023 to ensure a system to log overruns and other additional hours is put in place by April 2024 with an interim solution implemented in the meantime.
- Flexible work to be “agreed as the default” and other amendments to flexibility by September 2023.
- Evaluation mechanism for flexible work to be implemented with quarterly reports on it, the first one due in December 2023.
- Advanced rostering best practice will be 12 weeks in advance, whilst “recognising some degree of flexibility must be retained”.
- Working group with employers, nurses and other interested staff to “identify and embed” best rostering practice in September, with a report in February 2024 and “complete implementation” of new rostering best practice by end of that year.
- Steering group established in July to plan actions around agency usage, with a pledge to reduce it.
- Review into the use of recruitment and retention premia (RRP) to help shortages in the private sector to be due by end of November 2023, and a change whereby all RRP applications have to be endorsed by the Wales Partnership Forum business committee.
- Letter due by end of September 2023 laying out that nurses are “paid properly” for hours worked including breaks and shift overruns.
- Chief operating officers, nurses and other staff groups to be brought together by October 2023 to discuss improving patient care, and commit to only enacting corridor care and onboarding in “exceptional circumstances” through a named executive.
- Best practice guidance to be written about privacy and dignity for patients.
If it is rejected, the non-pay pledges from the original deal will still be implemented.
RCN Wales director Helen Whyley said the amendments to the pay deal could have a “significant impact” on the working lives of NHS employees, adding: “Our members have always acted in the best interest of their profession and the safety of their patients.
“It is their sheer determination, and the threat of further strikes that once again forced the Welsh Government to do better.”
She added: “While [the pledges] focus on non-pay elements of nurses’ terms and conditions, several of them will result in more money in our members’ pockets.”
RCN Wales members told Nursing Times, during strike action last month, they felt the most recent pay offer’s non-pay aspects were too vague and lacked accountability for their implementation.
In particular, some nurses said they disliked the lack of specific deadlines for some of the promises around working conditions, which the new deal appears to address.
Talks between the Welsh Government and the unions reopened at the end of June, and this latest deal was formally offered to RCN Wales and the SoR on 18 July.
Eluned Morgan, Welsh minister for health and social services, said she was “pleased” that some of the non-pay elements of the government’s deal could be clarified.
“The Welsh Government remains fully committed to working in tripartite social partnership, through our Welsh Partnership Forum, to deliver better working lives for NHS staff and better public services for our people,” Ms Morgan said.
Meanwhile, Ms Whyley from RCN Wales added that the improvements to the deal would “pave the way for full pay restoration” in the coming years, if the deal is accepted.
She said: “The campaign will not stop here whatever the outcome.
“We know that to achieve fair pay for nursing and a safely staffed workforce, we need short, medium, and long-term action from the government and we will continue to demand and secure just that.”
If RCN Wales members vote to accept the offer, the union’s dispute with the Welsh Government will be over.
The college said, should this happen, its attention would then turn to the NHS pay award for 2024-25.