BMA pickets in last December’s resident doctor’s strike (photo: Guy Smallman)
Amid slander and blackmail from NHS bosses and the Labour government, resident doctors have rejected health secretary Wes Streeting’s latest offer.
Resident doctors in England, formerly known as junior doctors, are set to strike for six days from Tuesday 7 April in a dispute over pay and jobs.
In the House of Commons last Thursday, Streeting said the British Medical Association (BMA) had a week to look again at his offer—or risk him withdrawing it altogether.
The BMA described the government’s offer as a “crushing blow”. It doesn’t go nearly far enough to make up for decades of underfunding of the NHS and the erosion of doctors’ pay.
Doctors should reject Streeting’s blatant scaremongering as an attempt to bully them back to work.
Talks broke down between the BMA, the government and NHS chiefs when it emerged that doctors were to be given just a 3.5 percent pay rise this year.
Resident doctors’ pay is still a fifth lower than it was in 2008, once inflation is taken into account. The BMA rightly demands pay restoration that would return salaries to the levels they were at 18 years ago.
The BMA’s Dr Jack Fletcher said what was on offer would mean further pay erosion given inflation is set to increase due to the US-Israeli war on Iran.
“We have been negotiating in good faith for weeks,” he said. “We have made abundantly clear throughout this dispute that our aim is pay restoration, and any deal that did not move us substantially in that direction was not going to fly.
“We are simply not going to put an offer to doctors that risks locking in further erosion of pay at a time when doctors continue to leave Britain for other countries.”
NHS bosses have been quick to accuse resident doctors of seeking to cause “maximum harm” to patients by striking for six days.
But doctors are not to blame for an NHS on the brink of collapse. The shocking truth is that while millions of people are stuck on waiting lists for operations, trained doctors are being forced to sign on as unemployed or go abroad in search of work.
Last summer there were 30,000 applicants for around 10,000 jobs. Streeting’s offer would only expand specialist medical training places from 1,000 to 4,500.
This fight is not simply about doctors’ jobs and pay—it is also for the future of the NHS as a public service.
A win for resident doctors will be good for all NHS workers. After all, it’s not just resident doctors who are furious at low pay and the deliberate destruction of the NHS.
Over a million health workers across the service are being forced to work harder for less pay.
A victory for the doctors could serve as inspiration for all workers to launch their own campaigns over pay and conditions, and create a huge crisis for the Labour government.
That’s why we all need to get behind the striking resident doctors and join their picket lines next week.
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