Just because it is the end of the year doesn’t automatically mean you will get a pay raise, but if the company does well it is somewhat expected by the staff that there will be a little something more in your pay packet.
If management simply says, no, we have no plans to give you a raise then management looks bad. However, if management can divert the dissatisfaction somewhere else then they don’t look like the enemy. So the bookkeepers had an idea, we will tell the nurses that because of the raises for doctor’s salaries there is no budget left to give them a raise. Yeah, it did deflect the attention but it didn’t really improve inter-group communication.
However, it may not have been the most effective ruse as the pay raise that was given to the doctors was only 1%.