Supporting nhs consultant doctors industrial action

[Lapland123]

I hope this has public support. Consultants have seen the largest pay erosion in public services- now 35 % pay erosion since 2010.

Add the pension debacle, where we are asked for real money now for a theoretical glitch in how pensions are calculated. The ‘real money ‘ bill now can be 6+ months of your take home pay annually. Yes, really.

Vacancies exist in multiple specialties and the day to day job is more and more difficult in the context of vacancies throughout the nhs

I hope we have support for industrial action due to this government’s disgraceful erosion of our pay though we are working harder than ever

My non-strike solution would be to lobby for bursaries for nursing and medical degrees to encourage more students. I’d also keep lobbying for additional NHS funding to go towards more staff (build hospitals, minor injuries units, etc) instead of yet another IT system to “increase efficiency”. The basic problem with the NHS is too few HCPs per capita population. I’d also waive all visa fees, and allow recourse to public funds to encourage trained staff from abroad. A lot of this is in the pipeline or partially implemented

If bursaries were introduced say from 2024 (and you've got as much chance of getting the govt to agree to that as I have of seeing a pig fly across my window), and if the number of teaching doctors and clinical placements magically increased to take on more med students (again - impossible with current capacity), the first new doctors would graduate in summer 2030 or 31 depending on whether they do 5 or six years. The earliest of that cohort would become consultants or GPs in maybe 2036, most would take longer.

And you forget that the lobbying has been done. So when you do all your lobbying, and govt say 'piss off, no more money', what are you going to do next? When another year has gone by, so we're down another 500 or so GPs and probably the same number of consultants? then what? lobbying isn't an answer. It has been done. It doesn't work.

I’m a nurse. I absolutely could not do my job without the consultants. They are not valued, it seems.
I fully support their strikes.
I actually think that we should all go on strike! It’s barely anyone who is rolling in clover right now- only the super rich with friends in high places. This country and the world as a whole seems to have become all about massive businesses making incomprehensible profits at the expense of real actual people.

Meanwhile, everyone in the UK’s real wages have dropped an average of 5% since 2010.

”The Bank of England warned that the UK was likely to fall into a recession that would last until mid 2024— the longest in 100 years.

Real wages in every region in the UK are lower now than when the Tories came to power in 2010, analysis by the Labour Party has found.

Wages adjusted for inflation are down by an average of 5%, leaving people £1,600 a year worse off than they were in 2010.

The data, from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), also shows that while wages in London remain the highest in the country, they have fallen by an average of 6%.”
uk.news.yahoo.com/exclusive-real-wages-across-every-102442309.html

so if everyone's wages have dropped by 5%, and consultant's wages have dropped by 35% over the same time frame,, you'd presumably agree that consultants have a good case and in the absence of any response to prolonged lobbying, have no choice but to strike?

(No, I realise you won't, but that's the logical follow-on from your post)

Why are you assuming that the bursaries would only be available to freshers?

Why are you ignoring making immigration faster and free so as to attract staff from abroad?

In the case of “no money piss off” striking and lobbying are equally effective. The difference is with striking you are consciously and deliberately adding more body bags to the death toll.

Lobbying is never done btw, it does work.

Except, I can’t find where it says consultants pay have dropped by 35% in real terms? I found one site that says 1% and a pp found a site that says 10% 🤷‍♀️

Where is the 35% coming from?

have no choice but to strike?
Can never agree to no choice but to strike. Sorry. It’s immoral to strike when you are in an essential profession where people’s lives depend on you doing your job. You keep lobbying or you vote with your feet and retrain into a different top 1% of earners jobs, after all I’ve been assured medical students are the top of their class and could easily be any other profession on a whim they’re that bright and intelligent.

Lobbying has been done for years and hasn't worked.

Giving a bursary to someone already studying medicine doesn't add another med student to the pot, and you've ignored the fact that we have no space for medical students. Each extra student needs three years worth of placements - there is no spare capactiy for these - then when they filter through you need extra junior doctor jobs and in later years extra consultant jobs, all of which need to be paid for.

and here's the ref for the 35% pay decrease
www.bma.org.uk/our-campaigns/consultant-campaigns/pay/demanding-fair-pay-for-nhs-consultants#:~:text=Yet%2C%20their%20real%20terms%20pay,pay%20cut%20by%20nearly%2035%25.

and that's what I've done with 75% of my time
And that's what most GPs that I know are thinking of doing
and many many consultants

so if you don't want any medical expertise left in this country in a few years, then I agree, it's a great solution. I hope you're healthy and likely to stay that way.

And you don’t see any of the glaring issues with this “analysis” that make it into an utter joke?

No I don't. But I'm done. We're never going to agree. You think that I want people to die, and I think you're an idiot with no idea of the realities of the NHS. Let's leave it at that as we're never going to agree and I play chess with people, not pigeons.

So they have used RPI rather than CPI, which will account for some of the difference.

But more importantly, this is post tax income. Everyone has said "tax the rich to pay for education, NHS, whatever". Consultants are the rich so they are paying these higher taxes on the rich.

Right,

You think I’m an idiot, but you’re not grasping how basic applied maths was done wrong.

Well first off the “analysis” assumes that the average pay of an NHS consultant doctor remains between £67,752 and £70,000 for the entire period charted.

When actually, the average pay of an NHS consultant doctor today is not £70,000 but £97,590 basic pay plus an average cash bonus of £32,530 resulting in an annual pay package of £129,773
www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/NHS-Consultant-Doctor-Salaries-E12873_D_KO4,21.htm

The 35% drop in real wages is a bogus number as it is calculated on the faulty data point that the average consultant doctor only earns £70k/yr

Secondly, the analysis uses RPI, when the standard for measuring real wages is CPI. This skews the calculation towards a bigger number.

The chart is an utter joke showing the “cash terms” of an average consultant’s pay today at a mere £70k, when we know for a fact that the minimum basic salary is
“As a consultant from 1 April 2022, you'll earn a basic salary of £88,364 to £119,133 per year, depending on the length of your service.”
www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/doctors/pay-doctors/pay-doctors

Not to mention the actual average.

I've heard of the Victorian concept of the deserving poor who receive charity. Now we have a concept of the deserving rich who shouldn't be taxed.

It says it is “take home pay” in the “analysis” but it isn’t really take home pay.

The 2008/9 average pay was the average basic pay for consultants.
www.nhsemployers.org/system/files/2021-06/Pay-circular-MandD-3-2008.pdf

The BMA paper also exaggerates here:
”Independent analysis published by the DDRB (Doctor’s and Dentist’s Pay Review Body), comparing consultant pay with that of those working in tax and accounting, legal and actuarial groups, found that the median salary of consultants is 'substantially lower'.”

when in reality the analysis only states on p94, para 7.40:
”While pay restraint was also experienced by the rest of the public sector, many of the consultants we spoke to felt that their pay had fallen behind that of the groups that they compare themselves to, such as lawyers and accountants.”

So suddenly feelings become facts…

Yes it does, after all werent pp talking about the attrition of medical students never making through the 6-9yrs to become a consultant?

I haven’t ignored the space issue, I said we need to build more hospitals and minor injuries units.

How does bumping up your £100k+ pay build us more hospitals?

Well his threshold income is unlikely to exceed £200,000 which is the point where the annual allowance taper kicks in and I can’t see how the salary increase will increase pension benefits by £130,000 so that won’t happen. And if he earns a quarter of a mil or more in that year (ain’t happening) then we’ll gladly pay a £30k tax charge given the huge pension increase and life changing earnings.

That link to glassdoor talks about an average of 5 salaries, - not exactly representative, is it? The £32k "bonus" comes from a single reporter.

I don't understand what the "cash bonus" is that they are talking about is either. The consultant salary is a fixed scale nationally, the only way to earn more than the point you are at on the scale is either to do more work than the standard 40 hour job plan, to do private work, which probably only a maximum half of consultants do, or to get something called "clinical excellence awards" which as the name suggests is cash given for achieving local or national excellence across a broad spectrum of your work - so going "above and beyond" expectations in multiple areas such as leadership, teaching, research. These have recently been overhauled and £32k pa would put you close to the top of national awards - so really outstanding, and only a tiny percentage of consultants would get it.

There is literally no "bonus" in consultant pay. A bonus is what you get for doing the work you are supposed to do, very well. The only way to get extra money as a consultant is to do more work.

If you can find a better source, I’m all ears. £97,590 is far enough above the BMA £70,000 to blow the whole 35% drop on wages claim to smithereens by itself. As is the BMAs use of RPI.

The bonus they mention isn’t really needed and I assumed it was the income from private paying patients that consultants take on on the side. It is part of their earnings after all.

The BMA chart is a lot like that Brexit Bus £350m/week figure.

Is the take home cash less due to tax bills, large pension deduction and deduction of huge pension tax bill? Sorry not read what BMA defines as take home cash. Assume they are also taking into account inflation (CPI or RPI).

The £67,752 can’t be average take home pay despite what the BMA analysis says because the 2008/9 basic pay rates would be much higher if that were the case.

I'm not linked /work in NHS so genuinely cannot read that chart also on a phone and short sighted. Not trying to be difficult what does chart say is basic okay rates?

Opps basic pay rates for 2008/2009