Junior doctors threaten ballot to strike over NHS ‘paltry’ pay
The summer of discontent is set to widen to junior doctors next month, with the British Medical Association to ballot junior doctors for industrial action.
The organisation held an emergency meeting this week, with its co-chairs writing to the secretary of state for health and social care, Steve Barclay, expressing their concerns about pay.
The organisation warned of junior doctors’ anger over pay restoration from the government, demanding salaries were to the same levels as 2008/9 during the financial crash.
This comes as train drivers, BT and postal workers are among industries to bring the country to a halt by taking action, as inflation is predicted to hit upwards of 20 per cent due to spiralling energy prices and the costs of living.
The BMA said the government had excluded junior doctors from “paltry” pay uplift from other NHS workers last month, in a “devastating blow” to their morale.
Of 13,000 junior doctors polled recently, almost 85 per cent said the two per cent pay award was ‘completely unacceptable’ while more than 70 per cent are prepared to take industrial action, and the government had until the end of September to take action.
BMA junior doctors committee co-chairs, Dr Sarah Hallett and Dr Mike Kemp, said the government must “commit to full pay restoration or prepare to face industrial action.”
“Junior doctors have had enough of being overworked, underpaid and undervalued, and will not tolerate these cuts any longer.
“Morale is at rock bottom and without rapid action from Government to restore our pay, we are deeply worried for the future of the profession.
It said the industry had been “addled with eye-watering levels of student debt” while their “real-term pay has been eroded significantly, and now are facing rocketing inflation and a cost-of-living crisis that is spiralling out of control.
“We continue to work in what are often appalling conditions to care for patients in an increasingly overstretched and underfunded NHS”, they said.
“Without fair pay, the Government risks doctors leaving to better paid professions or jobs abroad where they feel valued.”