Hi Martin,
I was never a big fan of AfC in the first place. There is not enough grades and the diferentials are too big. The top of a Band 6 is £6000 less than a Band 7. There is no way that a Band 7 is worth that much more than a Band 6! The time to stand up and fight has gone, nobody listened back then and I doubt anyone will now. I don't think we'll get much sympathy from outside of the public services the government has labelled us as pariahs, leeches & in the eyes of the public we are tarred with the same brush as benefit cheats!
Most people don't understand why we have all of these pay points within each grade So convincing people that we should get an increment just for turning up will be very hard to do. The thing we neeed to work on is making sure that the rules for incemental progress are fair and achievable. We will have to insist that every job within the NHS is appraised and every pay point has an agreed definition of what is required to progress. This will take about 20 years to complete, hopefully they will give up long before then.
