28E Let’s start the debate now
Let’s move on but not forget the past delegates told Congress whilst debating the emergency matter for discussion on the proposed 2008 – 2011 pay deal.
As a pre-cursor, the RCN’s Head of Employment Relations, Josie Irwin briefed Congress on the background to the three year pay deal whilst recommending that delegates sought further detail from the information in the pay area on the RCN website.
Congress recognised that this pay deal brought the best pay offer in the public sector this year and whilst reference was made to the four and five per cent offers given in the 1990s, the present economic climate was considered. Congress was urged to remember that this offer would benefit not just nurses and was not limited to only pay.
There was widespread recognition that this was the best offer on the table and several delegates stated their concerns that an alternative would be even less acceptable as there was a danger it could be both reduced and staged. Hamish Kemp from the UK Stewards’ Committee also stressed that any rejection of the offer may not be understood by the public.
Linda Marsden entered the discussion to urge members to accept the pay deal to allow members to get money in their pockets now and eloquently explained why this was so important to community nurses who were not getting appropriate travel mileage costs. In effect, she told Congress, they were subsidising the NHS every time they got in their cars.
Andrew McGovern reminded Congress that this was a UK-wide deal and this theme was taken up by Michael Brown who urged Congress to consider the risk of future devolved pay negotiations which delegates made it clear they would not support.
Throughout the discussion there was a running theme of thanks directed toward the RCN’s Employment Relations team for negotiating this deal and Congress felt that the team would fight equally hard to reopen talks if this were required.