- Conference
- 2024 National Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 5 December 2023
- Decision
- Carried
Female dominated professions such as HCAs, Nursing and Admin within the NHS have long been undervalued and underpaid. The NHS Pay deal of 2023 applied only to staff on substantive NHS employment contracts. Bank workers did not automatically receive the pay uplift and this has disproportionally affected women members.
Capable and brilliant women are being denied the benefits of substantive employment rights with the career progression and the financial security they provide. Women are systemically excluded and oppressed by the failure of the NHS to adequately implement flexible working.
The current system for meeting women’s flexible working needs is to force them into zero hours contracts, often called ‘the bank’ and at Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust, called ‘Kernowflex’. This means they lose out on pay, job security, career opportunities and other benefits that come with being part of the NHS.
Societal pressures mean that it is most often women that drop out of the substantive workforce. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) cites the UK as having the most expensive childcare in the developed world and there’s indisputable evidence that women do 90% of the unpaid care work in our society. Because of this, women are forced to “choose” part time and temporary work to fit around caring commitments.
Poor work-life balance is often given as a key reason for employees wanting to leave the health service. Conference notes that in 2021 agreement was reached between health unions and NHS employers on new flexible working rights aimed at giving NHS staff a better work-life balance. The provisions are set out in Section 33 of the NHS terms and conditions handbook. Conference believes that flexible working should be widely promoted across the NHS so that it becomes the norm rather than the exception.
Conference believes that women should not be forced into opting for Bank work because substantive NHS jobs are not sufficiently flexible to meet their work/life balance needs. This results in a two-tier NHS where Bank staff are subjected to insecure employment and inferior pay, terms and conditions, compared to their colleagues on Agenda for Change contracts.
Conference calls on the Service Group Executive Committee to:
1. Develop a strategy to improve flexible working opportunities for women within substantive NHS employment contracts, so that members are no longer forced into insecure work on ‘the bank.’
2. Continue to promote and publicise Section 33 of the NHS terms and conditions handbook on flexible working rights, and encourage employers to embed flexible working across the NHS.