Justice for junior doctors: Pay rise announced as workers strike in England
Yesterday the government announced NHS medics will receive a pay rise of 6% after they began their longest walkout yet over pay.
The five-day strike, which started yesterday and is due to run until 7am on Tuesday 18th July, is the longest walkout to take place in NHS history. However, in a bid to end industrial action, Rishi Sunak has proposed giving junior doctors a 6% pay increase.
However, health union leaders, who have previously been involved in pay discussions with the government, have reacted furiously to the warning from Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who said this pay offer would be final.
The British Medical Association (BMA), who support junior doctors, said the government was ‘driving doctors away’ and had missed an opportunity to put a credible pay offer on the table to end strikes when it accepted all the recommendations of the pay review bodies.
In a statement released yesterday, Rishi Sunak said: ‘[Yesterday’s] offer is final. There will be no more talks on pay. We will not negotiate again on this year’s settlements. And no amount of strikes will change our decision.’
Despite Mr Sunak’s firm decision, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), whose members were offered 5% under separate NHS negotiations, accused ministers of taking a ‘cavalier’ approach to pay when 100,000 nurses had voted to continue strike action in the latest ballot.
Pat Cullen, general secretary of the RCN, added: ‘The prime minister will have to explain to over a million outraged NHS workers why they are getting the lowest pay rise in the public sector.
‘Record numbers of jobs in the NHS are unfilled and the government cannot expect to turn that around when it appears not to value them. Patients are paying the price.
‘Inflation is not coming down in the way ministers told NHS staff and others it would. For nursing staff, the pay rise they actually rejected is worth increasingly little and being eclipsed now by announcements for other professions. It is unfair and inadequate.
‘This seems a highly cavalier approach by government when it knows over 100,000 nursing staff across the country voted to continue strike action only days ago. [The] news will only add to that number.’
As well as battling with health services demands for better pay, the government has also been contending with requests from teachers, who have recently accepted a 6.5% increase. The proposal came with a guarantee that it would not be funded from the existing schools budget but from elsewhere in the department.
At a Downing Street press conference, Mr Sunak confirmed that public sector pay rises in 2023-24, which would cost £2bn extra this year, would be funded from ‘savings and efficiencies’ in existing departmental budgets and not from more government borrowing, which might have fuelled inflation.
Image: Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona