Now doctors could STRIKE more than pay amid public sympathy for NHS workers

Doctors are ready to strike over the pay as they seek to exploit public sympathy for NHS workers in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

They claim there is ‘anger’ over ‘years of wage moderation’ and demand that the British Medical Association (BMA) investigate the possibility of industrial action unless the government gives them a ‘significant wage increase above inflation’.

The average GP spouse earns £ 113,000, while hospital counselors earn just under £ 114,500 on average, according to NHS Digital figures.

Last month, the government announced that doctors would receive a 2.8 percent pay rise – much higher than inflation.

Despite this, they say years of smaller pay increases mean they are underpaid and their plans for possible strike action will be revealed in the agenda for the upcoming annual meeting of BMA representatives on September 15.

The BMA has paid up to one of its ‘priority motions’ that will be discussed and voted on during the virtual conference.

The motion – drafted by the BMA’s own Agenda Committee – proposes: “ That this meeting recognizes the important work of British doctors and medical students in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic and that this work was carried out against a background of ongoing real wages. erosion for doctors in the UK. ‘

It calls on the BMA to survey members on the 2.8 percent increase and ask ‘what action do they think the BMA should take next to address this real wage erosion, including the possibility of union action’ .

Related motions have been filed by local chapters. For example, the Yorkshire Regional Council is calling on the BMA to “demand substantial wage increases above inflation to reverse years of freezes and sub-inflation”.

If the BMA issues a strike, it would be the third time it has done so in less than ten years. Before that, doctors had not gone on strike since 1975.

Tory colleague and former health secretary Lord Lansley warned last night that union actions threatened to undermine public support for doctors and the NHS as a whole.

“As I have often experienced myself in the past, the views of many doctors across the country are not necessarily reflected in the actions of the BMA,” he said.

‘Me and people in this country are immensely grateful to doctors and NHS professionals for everything they have done and are still doing during the Covid-19 crisis.

“What we and them don’t need is for this gratitude to be undermined by the behavior of unionists who don’t recognize that we all need to work together at this stage.”

Another of the ‘priority motions’ urges the BMA to call on the government to allow transgender people to identify themselves so that they can’ legally recognize their [preferred] slaughtered by witness, affidavit ‘.

Ministers have set aside plans for self-identification, although Boris Johnson is still believed to be considering the controversial move. At this point, a transgender person must get the approval of two doctors to change the legal gender on their birth certificate.

Another wave of motions highlights the Black Lives Matter movement, calling on delegates to recognize what it describes as the ‘pandemic of racism and discrimination that is silently terrorizing our planet and our NHS.’

A related motion says the death of George Floyd, murdered by a US police officer in May, “shed a light on institutional racism” and that doctors “should promise to expose racism in our working lives.”