IT’S estimated that nurses have lost up to 20 per cent of their wages over the last decade following years of pay freezes and derisory pay “uplifts” after enhancements and benefits were removed.

The 1 per cent pay insult follows NHS staff suffering a full year of the most gruelling workplace conditions ever as they struggled to save lives during the pandemic.

Over many years, skilled and experienced nurses have had their pay held down to justify pay awards being loaded towards the lower-banded NHS staff.

What has resulted is the most dreadful pay injustice where a mostly female workforce, many educated to degree level, are slipping downwards into poverty.

Nurses in particular are the backbone of the NHS because the buck always stops with them. It’s the registered nurses who carry all of the stress of co-ordinating shifts and running wards and units, but the most experienced nurses have not benefited from recent NHS pay deals.

To add insult to injury, the pay rises loaded towards the lower-banded staff have done little to lift these NHS workers out of poverty either.

This is because increasing numbers of these workers are no longer on NHS contracts and they can’t get enough paid hours of regular employment since private contractors took over soft facilities management services in the NHS.

Nurses and NHS workers won’t accept that they should endure deteriorating pay because they are lucky to have a job when others are falling into the ranks of the unemployed.

It’s not “lucky” to be in the type of job where pay doesn’t keep pace with the cost of living and where the conditions can mentally and physically break workers.

NHS staff are not to blame for government unwillingness to fully protect jobs and livelihoods. The GMB union will not accept any arguments that rising unemployment justifies a race to the bottom in workers pay, terms and conditions.

NHS workers are at the sharp end of dealing with the adverse health effects of dire poverty and they know that the rising numbers of unemployed people will need the NHS more than ever — which is making them even more determined to protect pay, terms and conditions.

The health service is nothing without its dedicated staff and NHS workers know that building opposition to the 1 per cent pay insult is more than just opposing poverty pay — it is about stopping standards slipping further in the NHS.

They are starting to realise that there is a pressing need to organise themselves to ensure that pay is boosted in order to raise staffing levels so that patients can be safe and properly cared for.

Arguments that there is no money to protect lives and livelihoods and to give NHS workers the pay rise they need and deserve just won’t hold up any more given that billions are being funnelled into the private sector for systems that are failing us.

The NHS has been targeted as a cash cow for the private sector for decades. The attempts to defund the NHS and sell off the estate are escalating.

The 1 per cent pay insult represents part of an overall strategy to demoralise and drive experienced staff out of the NHS for good.

Without experienced staff NHS services become unstable, unsafe for patients and unsustainable. It is then easy for highly paid NHS bureaucrats to restructure and further degrade services or hand them over to private companies who will move in and run them down even further.

As more services are run into the ground, shut down or privatised, patients will find they wait longer for treatment or they are forced to pay privately.

Respecting NHS staff starts with decent pay, terms and conditions. Platitudes and claps are not enough and the struggle for #nhspay15 is as important to staff is it is for the entire country because we will all need free and accessible healthcare at some point in our lives.

The trade unions must hear our members loud and clear — and organise them properly from the bottom up to fight for their rights.

Of course it is correct to make demands on the unions, but we must be serious in our approach. Defeating this government will take more than tokenistic political action.

The battle for the NHS, whether it is on pay or on ending privatisation, will require the absolute commitment of the movement — and that will mean every workplace in the NHS must be organised. Sustained strike action will not be possible in unorganised workplaces.

The mood is slowly starting to build as NHS staff are no longer willing to be “heroes” or “angels” who are left wide open to having their goodwill abused by ruthless employers.

Instead they want to be respected as competent staff who are entitled to decent pay and working conditions and they are beginning to indicate that they might be willing to organise themselves within their unions to fight back effectively.

Helen O’Connor is GMB Southern Region organiser.