Junior doctors strike

Cheers.


Tried it another way,


Dear Readers. Imagine you are paid £400 per week. If your boss drops your wages by £50, that's a 12.5% pay cut. Imagine that your boss does this again. Your now on £300 per week, and fairly ****ed off. Imagine that your job becomes more onerous and the job becomes even harder, and that you are so ****ed off that you ask for your pay to go back up to £400.

Your boss then tells you that going up from £300 to £400 is a 33% pay rise, and that this simply isn't an option. And also that you are being greedy, and as a result, people will suffer.

You'd feel pretty miffed, wouldn't you?

This is partly what is going on with the Junior Doctors' strike next week. They are asking for 35% pay restoration, to bring their wages back into line. (I've used £400 as a simple number to illustrate the maths, not as the exact amount).

These are the very junior doctors who were doing a lot of the grunt work in hospitals during the pandemic, alongside our nursing colleagues and other NHS services. Three years ago, we were clapping them; now the media are trying their hardest to vilify them.

By all accounts, Steven Barclays-**** is refusing to even turn up to any meetings with the BMA, let alone negotiate.

Please remember this next week. This is not about 'left wing wokerati taking over the BMA and demanding unreasonable wage demands'.

It is about juniors having the bollocks to stand up to a Government who simply doesn't care.
 
Joking aside.

I do know.

I worked alongside those men and women.

My wife is that Nurse.

Not quite sure why folk would go into that profession now, much less stay in it.
Agree.
That is the worry.
My son is an F2, 20% of his year have left or are on a career break thinking if what to do.
retention of staff across the whole sector is in crisis.
 
In a hospital near me, 3 of the 35 FY2 doctors (2nd year post qualification and the end to that initial phase) are planning on directly entering further training in the UK.
Of the rest, 20 are off to NZ or Aus. Double the pay, better conditions. Unless you have strong ties here, it’s hard to ignore.
 
In a hospital near me, 3 of the 35 FY2 doctors (2nd year post qualification and the end to that initial phase) are planning on directly entering further training in the UK.
Of the rest, 20 are off to NZ or Aus. Double the pay, better conditions. Unless you have strong ties here, it’s hard to ignore.
This is the reality.
The Royal Colleges raised this as an issue a few years ago. The answer from the DoH was that this was temporary and they would come back.
Not happened yet.
 
In my opinion they all need paying a decent wage. Funny how all these poncy politicians get away with second homes, travel allowances etc, and yet our own nurses, doctors have to pay to park in the hospital car parks.
The amount of money this and past governments of ours waste is staggering.
 
As an NHS employee myself, I would of course be very happy to accept more money if it were offered.

My lack of sympathy for the medical trainees' strike is informed by the following thinking - on which I'd be pleased to have comments if it's thought flawed.

The salaries of doctors in training AFAIK range from £29,000 to £58,000 depending on experience.
While they're in these jobs, they are being paid to train at public expense to qualify for hospital jobs which are paid to the extent that those in them have complained publicly and bitterly about the unfairness of their having to pay tax when their lifetime pension-contributions have exceeded £1,000,000.

If they decide for general practice, their salaries will be between £60-100,000 - or, if partners potentially a good deal more depending on their, or their managers', business acumen.
In either case, they will have excellent opportunites for additional private work, part-time working and flexibility, as well as a more-or-less complete assurance of job security.

The comparison of a medical trainee's salary with that of a nurse in charge, say, of a ward of 20-30 acutely-ill patients makes me wonder how quite how reward and responsibility are linked in the NHS medical vs. AFC (i.e. the non-medical/dental) payscales.
 
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... and yet our own nurses, doctors have to pay to park in the hospital car parks.

And that, Ladies & Gentlemen, is one of the worst indictments of this Government right there.

Utter bastards.



And yes, I do pay for my Nurse wife to park her car at the hospital - where she works for less than she could get by stacking shelves. And no, she won't go and work at Waitrose - and don't think I haven't asked her...
 
It certainly a difficult one. Whilst I'm all for the pay restoration, I do feel like the people in this situation knew the job description and pay involved with it when they chose their career. I.E. they know they will be rota'd for nights and weekends.

I know it is a slight deviation; however, my wife works in the hospitality industry and always has to go in to work on the bank holidays she is rota'd for and also wont get extra pay, or time of in lieu for doing so. Is she happy about the fact that i have a 4 day weekend? Not in the slightest! Is she happy about the fact i get to go and set up my new rifle without her today? You can bet she isnt. Does she whinge and moan to me about it? By god yes she does. Would she strike over it? Not in the slightest. There is always another person willing to do the job for the same terms you are complaining about.

Staff are too disposable nowadays I guess it what I'm going for!
 
We have had this discussion before on this site.

The unions focus on headline wages, never mentioning the rest of the remuneration package. When you look at that package, you understand why.

I remember the days when people said "the wages in the public sector are lower because they get better pensions". The reality is that the pensions - and other working conditions - in the public sector are still way better than can be found in the private sector.

Both my mother and my niece work/worked for the NHS, so I have seen it from the inside too.
 
We have had this discussion before on this site.

The unions focus on headline wages, never mentioning the rest of the remuneration package. When you look at that package, you understand why.

I remember the days when people said "the wages in the public sector are lower because they get better pensions". The reality is that the pensions - and other working conditions - in the public sector are still way better than can be found in the private sector.

Both my mother and my niece work/worked for the NHS, so I have seen it from the inside too.
Trouble is that that argument stands up if the job remains the same.

The chronic shortage of workers across the whole sector leads to rota gaps that the nurses and doctors fill without extra pay.
Burn out is a real factor.

The pension is not as good as it was. I have just retired and have been awarded 37% of what they said I would get when I started in 1988!

All these factors are not realised.
 
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