Premiership Good Guys Donating Wages to Nurses

By: Daryl | May 13th, 2007

Thierry Henry May Day for Nurses sticker It’s a super special afternoon in the Premiership today. UEFA Cup spots will be decided, relegation dogfights will be… err, dogfought, and possible legal actions may or may not ensue.

But it’s also May Day for Nurses, a fantastic idea where (some) Premiership footballers donate a days wages to a nurses hardship fund. The cash will obviously come in handy but the idea is also to raise awareness of nurses relatively low wages (approx. £25,000 per year) by comparing them with gigantic Premiership paypackets (this means you £120,000 per week Michael Ballack) and hopefully forcing the UK government to take action and pay nurses the same wage as other key public sector workers (if not Herr Ballack.)

So it seems that (with the possible exception of Cashley Cole) not all Premiership players are selfish overpaid money grabbers. So far 239 players have signed up, including the entire Reading and Fulham squads, a lot of Sheffield United and Tottenham players and some big names like Thierry Henry and Ryan Giggs. Extra good guy points to Mr. Ulises de la Cruz who is already donating 20% of his paychecks to fund charity projects in his native Ecuador. The complete, official list of those donating a days pay can be found here. At time of writing I don’t see Cashley Cole, Michael Ballack or any other Chelsea player on there.

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Category: English Premier League, World Football

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K Staines

I feel that although May day premership pay check giving is a great idea. I do not think nurses, like myself, would like to be thought of as charity cases. Many of us work for a relatively small wage due to the love of the job. Most of us have more than one degree and almost all nurses pay for their own further education without funding, for instance although hardship funds are available they are not always paid out. I believe the only way for a good wage to be paid is to privatise healthcare and then we will all have to pay in some way. Inevitably what we pay for will be what we get and then Nurses may then also be treated with respect ? Its not the low wages that are the problem but the lack of respect the public has for nurses who only want to provide a good quality service anyway how disrespectful is it to expect footballers to pay for our hardship funds to help us get on? Thank you a fully qualified and educated first class nurse
Patrice Le Gatuer

Whilst I think the campaign to highlight the low wages of the country's nursing staff is all good and well, I am a firm advocate of charity donations being nade anonymously. There is no need to publish the names of those who have given. As a consequence, you're making those not on the list look as though they don't give to charitable causes as well. Your's is not the only charity out there, and many of the players not mentioned on your site give freely to other equally worthy causes.
Richard Irwin

I can't see how nurses can get more wages from the system; they deserve more but where is the money going to come from?
A possible answer and probably the fairest answer: “to cut the wages of doctors; why not, they do a similar job and get up to six times more wages, plus doctors are simply highly qualified nurses”.
Doctor’s salaries should be lowered to £40,000 and nurses to rise to £25,000; this will make the system fair and the NHS budget can stay the same.
This should be non-negotiable to all new doctors and nursing salaries to rise within 3 years.
Food for thought...
... With a practical answer to a complicated question