Junior Doctors row: 98% vote to strike

[truman]

That don't come with the threat of a 250k fine if you don't work for 10 years under terrible conditions?

 

If you read my post I did say "a proportion".......

[petemcewan]

Labour's plans originally actually.

 

There's this in May 2007

Gordon Brown is heading for a showdown with family doctors over their six-figure salaries. He will tell them to bring back proper out-of-hours care or effectively take a pay cut. GPs will be ordered to see patients in the evenings and at weekends to justify their bumper salaries - which have risen to an average of more than £100,000 in the last few years.

 

And then there's what actually happened in October 2008.

The government has struck a deal with doctors' leaders to reform the GP contract which MPs complained had led to "eye-watering" pay rises, it was revealed today.

 

Doctors unions are used to bouncing governments into "eye watering" pay deals because they play on public sympathy for the NHS Angels, and they are trying it on again. Maybe you drank the BMA Kool Aid too.

 

The above is a complete diversionary tactic. Get back on the topic of

junior doctors and their dispute.

[sgtkate]

Says who cyclone? Have a think about it before you respond.

 

---------- Post added 22-01-2016 at 11:39 ----------

 

 

They are being asked to work fewer hours, not more.

 

Unless the BMA have outright lied on their website that I linked to earlier then they are being made to work longer hours with shorter breaks between shifts.

[L00b]

I'm not sure that's enforceable. What happens if somebody completes their training and refuses to do their 10 years.

FYI it's now routine (and battle-tested at Court) in most professions with a heavy component of (costly) employer-paid training in early years.

 

We introduced similar provisions into our trainee attorney contracts last year or 2 years ago IIRC (quite late by our industry's norms).

 

It's base economics and employment market play, when you think about it: it easily costs a firm like ours into 5 figures to turn a STEM 1st degree/Masters/PhD into a chartered and/or european patent attorney over 3 years (at best). And that's just money: you can easily double the real cost to a firm in terms of professional hours spent by older hands like me training young'uns instead of doing chargeable work, and the 'substantially inferior' productivity/profitability of the said young'uns for a good while after they start (because they have a lot to learn and so work slowly, and we seniors have to check -and frequently have to 're-do'- everything that they do).

 

Unsurprisingly, no one is too happy at seeing that sort of investment walk out the door as soon as they're freshly-badged to join the competition (which can afford higher salaries, if their business/staffing model does not rely on training the said young'uns from scratch but to poach them ready-trained).

We can hardly put them in prison.

No, unless Parliament sees fit to reintroduce debtor prisons...

 

...but we can certainly sue them for breach of contract and get an attachment of earnings or equivalent remedy

Edited January 22, 2016 by L00b

[JFKvsNixon]

I seem to recall that it is about a million pounds. Since their student loan doesn't cover it there's another reason why junior doctors wages should be modest, or if they want more money they should have a minimum contract with the NHS, say 10 years.

 

That would be a very bad idea. Health care knowledge should be international and not insular, so our doctors going abroad to learn/pass on new knowledge and skills, and foreign doctors coming here doing the same is a good thing.

[Emmabroooksy]

That would be a very bad idea. Health care knowledge should be international and not insular, so our doctors going abroad to learn/pass on new knowledge and skills, and foreign doctors coming here doing the same is a good thing.

 

 

Totally agree. As a junior doctor the experience of working overseas has in fact taught me how valuable the NHS is and that I actually want to work in it, despite the pay sometimes being better elsewhere!

However if the new contract is imposed there will more people leaving and less people coming here to work stupid hours for much less than they can get in Oz!

[JFKvsNixon]

It looks like we're coming to the end game with the junior doctor strike. It seems the government are going to impose the new contract onto the junior doctors, so they are going to have to take the pay cut and work the extra hours whether they like it or not.

[Gamston]

The striking Doctors looked like they were all enjoying themselves yesterday . Maybe they should apply to go on Britons Got Talent .

[Eric Arthur]

It looks like we're coming to the end game with the junior doctor strike. It seems the government are going to impose the new contract onto the junior doctors, so they are going to have to take the pay cut and work the extra hours whether they like it or not.

 

Their union has failed them miserably, I'd say through overconfidence brought on by rolling over previous governments, and a general public love of doctors for obvious reasons.

 

It will be interesting to see if they can hold on to that love because I think it might be easily lost if they are as naive in their next actions as they have been with the negotiations so far. Hopefully they can work something out for all our benefit.

[JFKvsNixon]

Their union has failed them miserably, I'd say through overconfidence brought on by rolling over previous governments, and a general public love of doctors for obvious reasons.

 

It will be interesting to see if they can hold on to that love because I think it might be easily lost if they are as naive in their next actions as they have been with the negotiations so far. Hopefully they can work something out for all our benefit.

 

How should have the junior doctors played their hand?

 

They've accepted that they haven't had a pay rise for around 7 years. When the government finally decides to look at their terms and conditions, they decide that they want to cut their pay and force them to work longer hours!

 

There was no way that the junior doctors was ever going to agree with what the government wants to do, so it was always going to come down to conflict.