I've got a new boss - and he earns £1,000 a day (including Sundays)

The UHL have announced the appointment of Derek Smith as their interim Chief Executive. According to their press release, Mr Smith has "30 years experience in the NHS and is described by Sir Thomas Legg, Chairman of the Hammersmith as, 'One of the NHS' most accomplished leaders and a fine public servant'".

What they forgot to mention was that while at Hammersmith, Mr Smith became the NHS' most expensive Chief Executive, picking up a salary in excess of £200,000 in 2003/04. He left there in June of this year, to become a consultant. Not a medical or surgical consultant, in case you're wondering, but a business consultant. The UHL haven't mentioned in their press release how much they're going to be paying him, but according to the Leicester Mercury it will be £100,000 - for three months' work. This seems rather a lot to me. I've worked it out as a little over £1,100 per day, if you include Saturdays and Sundays. I don't know whether he's planning to work weekends, though.

I wasn't at work today, but Mandy (our branch secretary) was. She reported this afternoon being "ambushed at the hospital shop by angry union members" who'd just read today's Mercury, demanding to know what the union were going to do about it. So we've written a press release, which says:

Healthworkers "outraged" by pay of new boss

Hospital workers in Leicestershire were shocked and outraged by the
news that interim Chief Executive for the University Hospitals of
Leicester NHS Trust, Derek Smith, will be paid £100,000 for three months
work - but they weren't surprised.

UNISON, who represent 5,500 healthworkers in Leicestershire, described
the decision to pay Mr Smith such a huge amount of money as "an insult
to the commitment and dedication of ordinary healthworkers".

Leicestershire Health UNISON branch secretary, Mandy Marsden, said, "It
was bad enough that our last boss, Dr Peter Reading, was paid £750,000
to leave his job. And we knew that Derek Smith was going to be costly.
At his last NHS job, as Chief Executive of the Hammersmith Hospitals NHS
Trust, he became the highest paid boss of any NHS Trust in the country
when his salary topped £200,000 a year in 2003/04. And he left that job
in June this year to become a 'consultant' - so he could set his own
rate of pay. So in many ways we are not surprised that he is going to
take such a large amount out of Leicester's hospital budget, but we are
very, very angry. That money could have been used to treat patients."

"There is nothing he can do that can justify that amount of money."

UNISON says that Leicester's hospitals are now on the brink of a crisis.
"There's a real danger that this could be the 'last straw' for many
staff," explained Ms Marsden. "This has been an awful year to work in
the NHS in Leicestershire. They brought in Capita to mess up everyone's
wages, cut staffing numbers so that we don't have enough staff on the
wards to care for patients the way we would like, closed wards leaving
us over-stretched on all three sites, and used the new NHS pay system to
down-grade Clinic Coordinators - the people who are the 'face of the
hospital' to tens of thousands of outpatient attenders.

"On top of all that, the UHL management got embroiled into a Private
Finance rebuilding project which we'd been telling them for years that
they could not afford, and which eventually cost Peter Reading his job.
Finally, the NHS pay rise this year will not even keep rate with
inflation - unless you are a Chief Executive, obviously."

"Most staff are struggling to make ends meet - at work where every
budget has been cut to the bone, and at home because of the poor pay in
the NHS. It's another world at the top, and one where they simply don't
seem to understand what life is like as a hospital porter, nursing
assistant or secretary."