Pete BirkinshawJan 16, 2024
Charlie Stross

NHS across UK spends a ‘staggering’ £10bn on temporary staff | The Guardian

Reminder that this money does *not* go to the temps (mostly nurses and doctors) who only get a tiny fraction of it: it's money paid to commercial employment agencies, ie. Tory donors. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/16/nhs-across-uk-spends-a-staggering-10bn-on-temporary-staff

NHS across UK spends a ‘staggering’ £10bn on temporary staff

Exclusive: Hospitals and GP surgeries forced to rely on agency personnel and paying staff for expensive extra shifts

The Guardian
Jan 16, 2024 at 8:53amWeb
Show threadMegatronicThronBanksJan 16, 2024
@cstross It's also F'all in today's money.
Show threadnarpolepticJan 16, 2024
@cstross I'm a bit surprised that Brexit isn't mentioned as a probable contributing factor in that article. I would've thought that it, combined with the existing NHS-to-elsewhere-and-better-paid pipeline would have played a part...
Show threadCharlie StrossJan 16, 2024
@narpoleptic Newspaper articles usually tiptoe around the Brexit elephant sleeping off its hangover in the wreckage of the living room.
Show threadPaula MaddoxJan 17, 2024
@narpoleptic @cstross that’s because the guardian was (is?) pro Brexit.
Show threadnarpolepticJan 17, 2024
@PaulaMaddox @cstross They were and are very much anti-Scottish Independence, but I don't recall noticing much if any pro-Brexit writing from them. Do you mean in editorial pieces or in general?
Show threadPaula MaddoxJan 17, 2024
@narpoleptic @cstross I remember reading a lot of pro Brexit propaganda in their articles back around the referendum
Show threadNicole ParsonsJan 16, 2024

@cstross

When a 3rd party interjects itself between employer & employee, customer & seller, etc -- it always seems to turn into a rent-seeking endeavor.

Offers little real value to either counterparty, yet costs a lot.

Depresses the benefits to each side, while the middleman takes the biggest slice of the pie

The employee sees wage suppression. The employer sees wage inflation. Both caused by an unnecessary middleman

Why did organizations decide it was prudent that critical ...
1/2

Show threadNicole ParsonsJan 16, 2024

2/2

... functions like human resources, recruiting, & staffing be outsourced?

The same parasitic dynamic in car repairs. Car repair insurance just inflates repair costs to the car owner & puts repair shops into bankruptcy because the paperwork hurdles for insurance are a net negative for revenue

There are innumerable examples like this

Unnecessary brokers between buyers & sellers

Some of the price gouging & consequent inflation is caused by a middlemen locking in a niche & fixing prices

Show threadThe Long TailJan 17, 2024
@Npars01 Cloud computing, another example.
Show threadBashStKidJan 16, 2024

@cstross It would interesting to know if this policy is mostly due to the Dept of Health, or to groupthink in Trust HR depts.

There must be some way of taking that budget, cutting out all the third party middlemen, spending it directly on significantly better staff basic rates, while including paid incentives for staff to basically work more hours until more staff can be recruited to take the pressure off.

Tl;dr Invest in and retain staff, not piss it away on rentiers

Show threadWinter TrabexJan 16, 2024
@cstross I feel sad reading this, you guys have truly embraced American-style healthcare where you pay through the nose just to get the snot.
Show threaddodothedev🦤💻Jan 16, 2024
@cstross @zanchey
Can confirm. I used to work at the temp staffing office for my local trust. We were paying through the nose for temp staff from agencies. Most people would leave working for the trust to work for the agency because they got more money than "standard staff" being paid by NHS
Show threadVoronJan 16, 2024
@cstross Wealth extraction by the already rich while sabotaging a government service.
Yup that’s the playbook they use 💯
Show threadAndy WoottonJan 16, 2024
@cstross I know a nurse who retired and went straight back on more money the next day. The Tories want privatised nurses to be paid more, at least in the short term. They're busy making sure the NHS fails us, so nurses leaving it to make the private sector better is great for them.
Show threadmnemonicoverloadJan 16, 2024

@woo
Same thing happening here in Ontario, Canada. One of the first things the Conservative provincial government here did as soon as they got elected was legislation to cap pay increases for nurses to sub inflationary rates. Stay employed with a hospital, get paid less every year. It's all part of the same underhanded privatization playbook.

@cstross

Show threadAndy WoottonJan 17, 2024
@mnemonicoverload @cstross I didn't know the fasching of Canada had got so far. Fight back NOW. It gets harder if you give them time to dig-in.
Show threadAndiiJan 16, 2024
@woo @cstross
Key phrase there: 'in the short term'
If their strategy succeeds, then staff go back to being paid badly but the rest of us have lost the NHS.
Show threadAndy WoottonJan 17, 2024
@AndiiB @cstross Sorry, the "at least" obscured my real meaning.
Show threadStephen J. AndersonJan 16, 2024

@cstross I know people have said overlapping things, but it’s kind of sensationalist. Private companies are hoovering up 4.6bn, and 5.8bn is “bank” (internal temp). But the Guardian classifies bank as “extra”, which is stretching the truth. Many people work bank for flexibility, including my wife. She’s an experienced nurse, and bank actually pays her less than she’s worth.

At 4.6bn it’s still dreadful, but the article undercuts itself by playing silly buggers for shock value.

Show threadThe Long TailJan 17, 2024
@cstross There's a similar story in the civil service. Wages are set so low that no one can afford to work there, except for the privileged or the incompetent.
Staff is provided by consultancies (you know their names) whose employees are paid normal wages, and then charged out at exorbitant rates.
Public purse pays for it, consultancy companies rake in profits.