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| New pay offer made to NHS Scotland health workers | New pay offer made to NHS Scotland health workers |
| (42 minutes later) | |
| The Royal College of Nursing has voted to take strike action | |
| An improved pay offer averaging 7.5% has been made to NHS Scotland health workers threatening industrial action. | |
| The Scottish government's £515m deal will now be considered by unions. | |
| First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Health Secretary Humza Yousaf were involved in "extensive" talks ahead of this latest proposal. | |
| Unite and GMB have suspended action by ambulance staff and confirmed that the offer will be put to members in a ballot. | |
| Unite members from the Scottish Ambulance Service had planned a work-to-rule on Friday and 1,700 GMB members were scheduled to begin a 26-hour strike on Monday, | |
| The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) and Unison had also backed strike action in the ongoing pay dispute. | |
| The RCN, which had delayed a formal announcement on strikes while negotiations took place this week, confirmed that its board members would consider the detail of the latest offer. | |
| Unison has recommended that members accept the deal. | |
| Fresh talks to avert strike by NHS Scotland staff | |
| Nurses in Scotland vote for strike action | |
| Yousaf warns strike action 'catastrophic' for NHS | |
| The Scottish government said it was a "record high pay offer" for front line workers. | |
| Annual pay rises under the latest deal would range from a flat rate payment of £2,205 for staff in Bands 1 to 4 and up to £2,660 for staff in Bands 5 to 7, backdated to April. | |
| This represents an increase of 11.3% for the lowest paid workers and delivers an average uplift of 7.5%, a government spokesperson said. | |
| The new offer also included a review into reducing the working week from 37.5 hours to 36 hours with no loss of pay. | |
| Mr Yousaf said no stone had been left unturned to reach its "best and final pay offer". | |
| He said: "We have made the best offer possible to get money into the pockets of hard working staff and to avoid industrial action, in what is already going to be an incredibly challenging winter." | |
| Wilma Brown, from Unison, said she recognised that the new package was the best that could have been negotiated. | |
| She told the BBC: "The new package demonstrates that we are concerned about everybody's take-home pay these days and the professional groups have lost out a lot of money over the years during austerity and various other reasons and that this goes some way to starting to make that up. | |
| "Is it enough? No, we would have wanted more, but we believe that this is the best deal that we will get through negotiation." | |
| Keir Greenaway, GMB Scotland senior organiser, said staff needed to be valued to "tackle the chronic understaffing crisis across NHS frontline services" after a decade of cuts and the Covid pandemic. | |
| "The reality is this offer remains below inflation for the vast majority of staff, but it requires our members consultation given the additional monies tabled by the government," he added. |