Nursing Pay Policy: Chaos in Context

Abstract

This paper stems from aspects of on‐going research into nurses' pay, grading and training, building upon fieldwork and documentary research conducted in the course of completing an ESRC‐funded doctorate and preparing a commissioned research report for the ILO (jointly with David Winchester). The paper focuses on causation behind the current chaotic state of government pay policy with respect to nurses' pay and seeks to enrich the current debate around attempts to decentralise pay for nurses (and for the NHS and public sector more generally). In particular, it is argued that government policy in the 1980s and early 1990s has built on and exacerbated past policy problems and has exhibited a number of fundamental contradictions, predicated upon differing representational forms for nurses (professional associations and unions, and TUC‐affiliated unions) and the more general unwillingness of successive governments to act as ‘model employer’ with respect to actual outcomes in nurses' pay. It is concluded that the current policy preoccupation with decentralisation must be understood in the light of underlying continuities, but represents a reactive and flawed approach.

Citation

Thornley, C. (1994), "Nursing Pay Policy: Chaos in Context", Management Research News, Vol. 17 No. 7/8/9, pp. 123-125. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb028387