EBME Forums Forums Management Professional Issues Agenda For Change Curious is AFC a step forward?

It's not a media blackout as such, is it? It's just that in our pathetic modern "culture", the media (for want of a better word) is more interested in celebrity sound-bites (grunts?) than real issues, affecting real people.

To the the Great Unwashed, the Health Service means poor, hard-done-by nurses (who are variously portrayed as "angels of mercy", or perhaps as the long-suffering hand-maidens to the doctor class) and genius doctors (of the "brain surgeon" type). That's it: no-one knows (or cares) about unglamorous "support staff".

And, of course, those lousy "hospital dramas" on TV have done nothing but reinforce this simplistic view. The bottom line is that newspaper readers, TV viewers and the general public at large couldn't give a damn about whether NHS staff are getting a fair crack or not. And (with all the rest of the stuff that they apparently need to be worrying about), why should they?

The only way that the biomed fraternity is ever going to get its aforementioned fair crack is if they (we) stop wringing their hands about whether they are getting the respect they deserve (what name to be called, and all the rest), then pull their selves up by their bootstraps, and (for once) get truly organised as a group!

Due to the fact that staff got put on pay protection, nobody technically got hugh pay cuts except on paper. Practically it might have meant that they didn't get an increment due to either being on pay protection or now finding themselves at the top of a new AFC band but they didn't actually loose money out of their pay packets. To a newspaper that's no news and I've never seen a paper where the top story was "Nothing happened!" Hence since nothing technically happened to nurses pay there's still stories that NHS staff are under paid.

If no one actually lost out ... why do we get so much moaning and groaning about it all on this forum, then, I wonder?

Probably because in some cases unless people were sucessful in appeals or got rebanded it could have took upto 9 years of protection before the top of the band caught up with their protected pay.

I'm sure people on this forum have said that they have received real and substantial pay cuts in their pay packets. Many of our works department staff definitely have - their job descriptions and lists of duties were changed just before the AFC process began, and many have ended up on lower grades with lower wages. The hospital saw the opportunity to use AFC to cut this department's wage bill.

£8.5K ACTUAL pay cut when first assimilated (£25.5K to £17K. This was later rectified on appeal but others were not so lucky.
Topper

What a ACTUAL deduction from your pay packet? I thought most of the cuts were actually on PAPER i.e. when pay protection took effect, no deductions where taken. If pay protection wasn't put in place at assimilation I'd imagine it would have been like the 10% tax band and the press would have had a field day!

The situation on being banded to a lower pay range shouldn't even come down to pay protection!

Since most, if not all, technical staff are covered by the long term pay protection clause in AFC, if there is a drop in wages this should be covered by a R&R payment. Which means you continue to get the COL increase on most of your pay (but not, necessarily, the R&R)

Any actual pay cut in the first 7 years, beyond COL, is not allowed by AFC and almost certainly an "illegal deduction from wages"

Even if you are put on pay protection the employer is obligated to :-
"As soon as possible during the period of protection, the skills, knowledge and role of staff subject to protection will be reviewed to establish whether they could be re-assigned to a higher weighted job or offered development and training to fit them for a higher weighted job."

I don't know of many employers who have done the above, but they are left open to grievances, and possibly legal claims if they haven't

As I've said before, IMHO most HR couldn't find their way through AFC with a chainsaw! and AFC is much easier than the old assortment of Whitley t&cs