NHS staff march in a protest against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine rules, in London, Britain, January 22, 2022. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls
UK doctors threatened strike action over pay levels as Liz Truss, the favorite to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister next month, cautioned that the government needs to "control” wage levels to avoid stoking inflation.
Junior doctors will vote on strike action if the government doesn’t by the end of September commit to restoring their pay to 2008-2009 levels when adjusted for inflation, the British Medical Association said late Thursday in a letter to Health Secretary Steve Barclay. In a statement, the BMA said real pay was now 25% lower than 13 years ago, and that doctors are "demoralized, significantly burnt out, and feel undervalued by the government’s failure to take any action to address pay erosion.”
The potential industrial action adds to worker unrest -- dubbed the "summer of discontent” by the UK media -- that’s hitting the economy as pay packets fail to keep pace with soaring inflation. Earlier this week, the Royal College of Nursing said it planned to ballot members on a possible strike, while rail and postal workers and criminal barristers have also taken industrial action or plan to do so.
Adding to the malaise among junior doctors was their exclusion last month from a National Health Service pay deal. While some doctors and dentists were awarded a 4.5% pay rise and the lowest-paid NHS workers will get an uplift of as much as 9.3%, junior doctors were excluded because they had agreed in 2018 to a multi-year pay deal worth 8.2%.
There was also little comfort for them in Thursday’s Conservative Party leadership hustings. Truss, the foreign secretary who enjoys a wide polling lead over rival Rishi Sunak, was asked what would happen to pay rises promised to doctors and nurses if she follows through on her tax-cutting plans.
"It’s very important that we keep control of public sector wages, that we don’t allow a wage-price spiral to take place, that we do keep control of the public finances,” said Truss. She wasn’t asked specifically about junior doctors.
Sunak has also warned about stoking an inflationary spiral, though in the hustings in Cheltenham, western England, he said fixing the National Health Service was a priority.
