Royal Fleet Auxiliary personnel who support Royal Navy operations around the world are to receive an above-inflationary pay rise and improved conditions after seafarers and maritime trade unions accepted a new pay offer, the Ministry of Defence has announced.
The agreement includes a 4.5% pay rise backdated to 1 April 2025 and a further 3.6% rise from 1 April 2026. It also brings changes to leave arrangements that will allow RFA personnel to earn more time off for periods spent at sea, a one-off leave buy-back arrangement and a £250 one-off payment.
Both the RMT and Nautilus unions confirmed that RFA seafarers had accepted the offer. The two unions said they would continue to work with the RFA on further modernisation, including exploring ways to increase leave entitlements and developing pay arrangements that better reflect the unique nature of RFA service.
The Minister for Veterans and People, Calvin Bailey MBE MP, marked the deal during a visit to Portland Port on 28 July, where he met crews aboard RFA Tidespring and RFA Mounts Bay, thanked personnel for their service, discussed workforce challenges and heard how the service is preparing for the future, including crewing the Fleet Solid Support Ships.
Speaking from Portland, Bailey said:
“The Royal Fleet Auxiliary is a vital part of the Royal Navy and contributes directly to the UK’s national security through their crucial work across the world.
“This agreement recognises the unique contribution that RFA members make to the Royal Navy and provides a strong foundation for the future as the organisation prepares to crew the next generation of support ships.
“We thank the Maritime Trade Unions for their support in reaching a resolution.”
The RFA is a civilian-crewed fleet owned by the Ministry of Defence that provides logistical and operational support to the Royal Navy. Its personnel deliver fuel, supplies, ammunition and other essential support to UK and allied vessels around the world, enabling Royal Navy ships to remain deployed and conduct operations globally.
The two vessels visited by the minister illustrate that role as RFA Tidespring, a Tide-class tanker, supports the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers as part of the UK Carrier Strike Group and recently returned from a deployment to the High North, having sailed with HMS Prince of Wales to the Indo-Pacific last year. RFA Mounts Bay supports amphibious operations and exercises, ensuring embarked Royal Marines and their supplies can be delivered ashore wherever they are needed, and is preparing for operations later this year.
According to the Ministry of Defence, the agreement forms part of a wider programme to improve recruitment, retention and workforce conditions across Defence.
The department said the deal is expected to support recruitment and retention across the RFA, helping ensure it is well placed to meet future operational demands, including crewing the Fleet Solid Support Ships that will support the Carrier Strike Group and global operations.
Good news 👍
Very good news, perhaps we can get a few more of these… ahem… warships, to Sea to support our efforts in the Defence of the UK; however, it may lead to retention but will the new pay offer lead to recruitment, the acid test that will decide could we put more RFA out to Sea.
I hope so.
At the end of the day, it’s a quality career that will not be impacted by AI.. good solid jobs in the service of the nation..
As long as they modernise and have good apprenticeships I would imagine the future job market will snap these up.
We would hope so, Jonathan, we would hope so.
Interesting discussion on the Rest is Politics about the future of education and the different routes to employment Rory suggesting that people without Degrees could be looked down upon and Alastair making the point that the Swiss were proud to be Craft Masters and the French plumber / electrician always turned up with an apprentice; it was the British mind-set that needed to change with regard to education and future employment.
I always through we needed to change our view of degrees.. why we insist on following that same standard path of a degree when you are 18-21 is bonkers as..
1) even in most degree level professions you don’t actually need the degree straight away.. some professions not until later.
2) at 18 you don’t know your arse from your elbow about where you want your life to go.. so why the fuck do we make a teenager sign up on a one way ticket on a once in a lifetime ride…
Personally I would actually move almost everything to an apprenticeship model.. all healthcare professionals, engineers, software developers etc etc… and you get you degree on the job as you need it.
I’ve got 3 of the things.. the first one I was paid a bursary to do by an organisation that was going to employ me and the other two I did as part of career progression when I was in my 30s and 40s and became more and more senior.
You’re showing your lack of knowledge on the subject. The RFA Requires degrees for basically no roles (save logistics officers). All other roles are drawn from cadetships and apprenticeships which you are paid to get the relevant qualifications and job experience prior to getting qualified.
I was not talking about the zRFA I was talking about wider society and its obsession with degrees.
It’s one of the few things the current government has been able to achieve, ending the constant strikes and chaos, the RFA however are still grossly under paid compared to civilian operators.
And given the lack of fleet availability for taskings generating more RFA, even if dual RFA/RN crewed, seems a no brainer.
Given the backdating of the awards they are worth more than the headline % as they uplift the baseline.
So HMG gave an issue in that they don’t want an inflationary wage spiral but need to fix this urgently.
Agreed RFA pay is still too low.
In the end you can get away with awarding small niches above inflation payrises.
The problem will come with things like nursing.. that’s 700,000 people and they have never undertaken a full national strike.. because it’s a group that a full national strike would essentially be catastrophic. Even with nurses maintaining life critical services. the nurses in new Zealand got to a point to set up a full national strike about 20 years ago due to safety issues in the system.. they did 2 1 day strikes a month apart . before the government was essentially forced to capitulate on the safety demands.
Nurse are not likely to every undertake national strike unless it was considered a no win issue to not, but if they ever did the nation would be screwed within a day.. interesting fact nurses have never agreed the last pay awards and voted against them, but never voted to take industrial action over it..
It is not beyond our intellectual capacity to peg all these essential worker’s salaries to a number of factors. Health workers salaries should increase inline with the health of the nation and the available money in the health pot. Thus as the tax take increase so should salaries. If this were done people would become increasing aware of the impact of high taxation on the actual collected revenue.
Certainly where people can withdraw their labour as in much of the private sector and others can simply jump into their jobs that is fine. However the Army, Police etc. cannot strike and for good and sensible reasons.
One of the first things which need doing with Government workers in general – is that incomes need to be re-assessed to ensure they are appropriate.
The problem with things like nursing is it’s an international workforce.. it’s piss easy for a nurse to leave and work anywhere in the world… most countries even pay their moving costs and offer golden handshakes..
The US for instance pays its nurses about 50% more than the UK.. which essentially means it hovers up most of the free international workforce and we fight for scraps..
And sadly we have to import about 20,000 nurses a year to keep our supply up.. because we loss about 40,000 a year and only have the capacity to train about 20,000 home grown nurses..
Simply put it’s both to expensive and two challenging to train 40,000 nurses.
And there is literally no spare capacity.. almost all registered nurses work for the NHS 600,000 out of the 700,000 we have.. and everyone of those could walk out of this country tomorrow and have a job in another country… the global shortage of registered nurses is now around 6 million.. so you could try an pay what you like.. but without nurses we start dying in the hundreds of thousands every nation on earth apart from the Philippines is begging for them ( the production of staff nurses is one of the major industries in the Philippines)..
So it’s just as easy for the 700,000 nurses to walk out the country as it is for billionaires.. and losing all the billionaires will not kill you.. no nurses will… and it takes about a decade to make a specialist nurse…
Well to be fair I’m not overstating the benefits of Billionaires but each one probably provides funds to pay for anything up to 2,500 nurses not to mention the financial benefits of having their businesses in this country.
Also as I indicated in my last paragraph you need the ensure the salaries are adjusted to an appropriate level in order to avoid what used to be called the brain drain.
As for the global shortage of nurses, whilst I dislike the term AI, it will eventually provide tools which aid nursing and health care in general. This certainly doesn’t mean AI takes over nursing but it may well help. Nursing is after all a people orientated profession.
If we need more staff then we need to pay them and train them however I suspect there is a better way.
AI is probably something that will do nothing to alleviate the nursing requirement.. essentially nurses undertake the following
1) administrative of medicines.. an AI cannot make up an IV, cannulae and run an infusion.
2) medical interventions, an AI cannot set up oxygen or a nebuliser, suture a wound, plaster a fracture, take down a dressing, clean a wound and redress it.
3) physical safety and movement. An AI cannot stop someone falling in the toilet or mobilise someone bed to chair or turn them for pressure sore management.
4) physical assessment.. I challenge any IA to make a physical assessment of a pissed off old lady who cannot remember why she is in hospital.
5) liaison with wider services and management of care.. making sure the person has dinner, gets dressed, gets a haircut, has a shave, gets to xray, has the meds delivered, is ready for a consultation visit, gets physio and OT, talks to the social worker about get support on discharge and making sure transport is booked and beds are made..
6) running a crash call and resuscitation of a person…
7) clearing and decontamination of a bed space…
AI has zero fucks chance of replacing nurses… I’ve pissed myself laughing several times when they have tried..
🙂
To be fair I completely understand where you are coming from.
My thoughts are that whenever you go into a hospital ward you hardly ever see them doing any of that because the are all at the main desk trying to type notes etc. into an ancient computer system for hours on end. In theory a decent computer system would free them up to do some actual nursing.
In that sense I completely agree, but to be honest most of the modern notes that nurses have to write are a load of old bollox anyway, a lot of lt is essentially risk management rite large.. anti legal challenge notes and not useful.. also we used to have an oral tradition where by you passed on information verbally.. which is the most effective way.. but accountants cut the hand over period as a cost saving.. so now one nurse has to write it all down and the other has to then read it all when they take over…
Portland.
The Busiest RN and NATO ship port In the UK ?
Time to re-develop and return to MOD ownership ?
Second largest Harbour In the World ?
Proof that “They” were wrong to close It back in 1995 ?
Second largest *artificial* harbour in the world, to be precise. Poole just round the corner, for example, is the second largest natural harbour after Sydney Harbour but is hopelessly shallow for shipping in most parts.
But if we are redeveloping the ability to build floating dry docks then a harbour with an average 16m depth seems like an excellent investment.
Poole Is nuts at this time of year…. I only go there on Two Wheels nowadays.
Yes, Portland seems like an obvious place for the new RN activities as witnessed repeatedly In the years I’ve been visiting.
Normally a Tide or Bay and some random Navy boats most visit and this past week has seen lots of MCM ecsercises In and out of the Harbour.
TS Sir Tristran needs a lick of paint now !
(not my best spelling !!!)
Seen any Sneaky Boats at Poole?
Not really, it’s not a Motorhome friendly place during the summer months so I tend not to go there.
Love the area though.
We go to the Yacht club a few times a year, lovely!
Suspect Several areas in Scotland will be in the line Ahead of you for EUSTON contract..!
This is great news. Those ‘folk’ earn ever single penny, and frankly have been ‘left behind’ in pay and conditions, for way too long.
A band-aid that will last a few years, then back to the future.
RFA pay rates are still laughable compared to the regular Merchant Navy
Such a modest settlement. Why did it take so long to agree?