The British Medical Association is arguing that doctors’ pay has been eroded by 29 per cent in real terms since 2008, and that they won’t accept anything less. The union this week announced that resident (formerly junior) doctors will walk out for five consecutive days from 7am on 25 July.
Now, he has offered to look at making doctors’ pensions “slightly less generous” so that they can have higher pay now. It’s a smart move because it highlights another perk of the job for doctors, which is their pension arrangements, and makes the BMA look even more unreasonable if it refuses to entertain the possibility while continuing striking.
square DR JONATHAN ILIFF I’m a doctor and the BMA doesn’t speak for me
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The common themes in the BMA’s disputes are always an organising committee in the union that is far more militant than the membership (and in the case of junior doctor strikes, even the wider BMA), and a membership that feels disrespected and taken for granted by politicians.
This means that doctors are more likely not to notice the disapproval of non-medics, or to assume that they just don’t understand the arguments in favour of the pay rise. Initially, as public opinion turns against them, they might not appreciate what’s happening, before adopting a persecution complex, and then eventually understanding that their union may have done them a disservice once again.
Doubtless his warnings will be dismissed as those of an older doctor – Winston is 84 and has been a member of the BMA since 1964 – who has forgotten the importance of backing junior colleagues. He will likely get little satisfaction in a few months’ time from pointing out that he did try to warn those colleagues about the direction they were taking.
This has happened on benefits and grooming gangs: why not doctors’ pay too? The pay rise that ministers agreed last summer shortly after the new government was formed will also be a small factor in the BMA’s thinking, but less so than the wider pattern of holding out and then caving.
But what’s missing here is that public opinion isn’t currently moving towards the doctors, whereas ministers previously caved on other matters because they were taking a hammering. Once again, the BMA may discover that the public doesn’t always think the doctor knows best.
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator magazine
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