Doctors right to strike, should it be removed?

[DistinguishedSocialCommenator]

Hello
Several people within our families are doctors. Most started out wanting to care for people, but as time goes on, the reality of money, and spending comes into play for some.

PM Rishi Sunak in a tv interview partly balmed doctors strikes for failing to bring down hospital waiting lists. I rarely agree with a politician but in this case, I know he is right. EG, myself, my OH, one of our children and grandchildren have had their appointments cancelled because of strike impacts. Our children and grandchildren do have private healthcare but those do not cover pre-existing or you end up on the NHS with chorionic conditions.

Our police officers and armed forces personnel are not allowed to strike

AIBU to expect a no-strike agreement for doctors and possibly nurses. If agreed, give them 9 months' notice about no-strike agreements. I honestly believe hardly anyone would leave and those leaving would have possibly left the NHS anyway as some do and go to another country just like we get doctors from abroad. Their pay claims could be easily managed in the same way police/armed forces pay rises are managed as well of those MP's.

Failing to bring down hospital w/l lies with the present government and the growing of these waiting lists, the doctor's strikes have certainly made things a lot worse. We are regularly hearing on our news media about growing waiting lists and people waiting for urgent treatments and the waiting times in A&E departments etc

AIBU to feel that doctors should be made to sign a no-strike agreement with a few month's notice to have the no-strike agreement in place before next winter? Also, have a pay body set up like the ones our MP's enjoy.

Sillybilly1993

GPs’ starting salary is £70k, the average nurse earns £37k. They seem like good salaries to me! Ultimately if NHS staff don’t like their jobs and their salaries then they can vote with their feet and leave, which is what the rest of us do.”

They are, in their thousands. How many more will lose their lives when people are simply no longer willing to spend years and a great deal of money training? or to remain in the UK when they can earn two or three times the salary overseas?

You do realise that becoming a GP is a specialisation, which requires further training after med school is finished, just like any other? £70K and £37K goes nowhere in a city like London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, York, Exeter. Well you name it. These aren’t kids. By the time most GPs are fully qualified, they are generally of the age where most people are thinking of starting families. If they want to buy into a practice, it costs a great deal of money.

Nobody's right to withhold their labour should be removed.

And GPs salary is often £50k so that's bollocks.

I am now sure after reading this that you are just baiting.
you have shown you have zero knowledge of what it is like to work in healthcare and you are just being intentionally vile.
As an NHS senior nurse- go fuck yourself. You are honestly reprehensible in your attitude and I hope to god I never meet you in real life.

You can't argue with stupid 🤷‍♀️

I still dispute that the public 'paid for my training'...

85%+ of my time was spent delivering patient care during my time before being a consultant. That is delivering the same care that the consultant would have done, for half the cost on daytime hours, and a quarter of the cost it would be to have an army of consultants available 24/7 out of hours.

If you're going to tie me to the NHS for 10 years on the premise of we're paying to train you, then I expect to spend my time being trained, not delivering routine service provision.

I don't think you understand just how much extra that would cost.....

And now they also gave to pay back £250,000 in student loan. Not sure how anyone is paying for their 'training'.

What I was going to say. If they're told they can't strike and their conditions don't improve (because no inconvenience being caused likely = no action taken) well, they'll just leave or go private/abroad.

Do you mean when they joined 20 years ago on very good salaries with 30,000 more police officers with no cyber crimes.

The Police my DH signed up to, is not the current situation. He lost his good final salary that was promised, he lost his 30 years service which is now 35. Every other Public Service can strike for better pay and conditions. The Police can't.

Thank you.
In an ideal world, this would not have happened.
The story you post, it is happening to millions of others and not just the police force staff.

I worked for 2 local councils. We too lost that, had a pay freeze for 3 years I think (can't exactly recall as it was years ago) and lost most of our car allowance, which was called "essential car users allowance" as when staff started the employers knew it was essential to have a car as you could be more effective

Looking back 30 years like what you have said, millions have lost out and contracts are not worth the paper they were written on

Though I'm being affected by final pensions stuff which i dont really understand other than getting lesss - if things stayed the way they were - trust me inflation would be massive and those that left work now or a few years ago and built up a small next egg for rainy days, they money would become worthless with hyper inflation - Just look what happend at 11% inflation

That is historical people going abroad and many move abroad as they gfeel there is less crime, less stress as do the many that move to England/UK for a better life as do our doctors, nurses - its swings and roundabouts and always has been and will be.

Look at our PM/Rishi. He had a Green card to move to the USA - are you telling me he is having financial difficulties? Just an example some people will move as they want to move to another country for various reasons,

Jeremy Hunt first announced the war on doctors in 2016. There were just about enough doctors to keep patients SAFE on the weekends. He wanted to make the existing doctors workforce stretch themselves over 7 days. E.g. elective surgeries taking place on the weekends. Without paying extra. Even Public Accounts Committee said the Government had "no coherent strategy" how to make 7 days service happen without extra funding. The doctors were already doing 14-15 hours shifts without breaks and they rebelled. The same for nurses. It went all downhill from then. Inflation was 2%. You really need to educate yourself. Dr Clarke wrote a very lucid account of those days in her book Your Life is in My Hands or a Junior Doctor Story. Jeremy Hunt had no guts to even have a public debate with doctors. Even when they resorted to camping 24/7 at the doorstep of his office. The man has so much contempt for NHS, the sooner he is out of Government the better. Looking forward to the election

What did Jeemey say when you complained to him? For the record, I'm no poltician and have no time for any politician as I don't trust them.

However, I'm aware that strikes in this sector hurt many people and worse.

As per my OP, I've clearly stated who could look after NHS pay deals but no one takes note of that as something like that would work as it works for MP's.

Hi I am an NHS midwife. My colleagues are not going abroad. The older ones are taking early retirement. The younger ones are retraining to be something else. The competition for midwifery courses is 20 applicants to a place. Followed by a gruelling 3 year course. 10-15% of newly qualified midwives leave within a year. Lots leave within 10 years when they look at their work/life balance. You mentioned earlier that you worked for the Council and when the pay and conditions was changed nobody left. Well, I can assure you the NHS staff are voting with their feet

You can really tell a lot about someone by their views on collective action.

Of course they should maintain their right to withdraw their labour.
We already have some of the most regressive, anti-trade union laws amongst western democracies.

Rights are only ever temporarily granted, never permanently given.
To argue that workers should have less rights and remove their ability of collective bargaining through withdrawal of labour, is, quite frankly, appalling.

Every in work benefit you have has been fought for. The idea of surrendering our ability to demand fair pay and better conditions is on reminiscent of a Victorian mill owner.

Hello
Thank you.
Many people are taking early retirement, me and my OH left work age 50+ but below 55 as work everywhere is getting harder and harder its not just the NHS. Our children and their OH's in my OH all worked in the private sector, trust me, its cut-throat out there - you often don't get the nice pensions, sick leave etc and if they feel you are under-performing, out you go - millions leave their job every year for one reason or another and some can manage to work better than others

I left because we had our first grandchild as we did not want them being looked after by strangers. Where I worked, some had a lot of difficulties with the changes and thankfully and some others did not as we all have different capacity, etc - Yes, if they had worked in the private sector, most would have left

Do you know anyone working for a supermarket, ask them about the turnover in that or the hospitality trade - all jobs are difficult

Ideally, everyone should be paid more, have longer hols and work in a very safe environment for themselves and their customers/patients - money is always the crux of things. If I was your PM, I'd award NHS staff inflation plus 50% pay rise - but then the police, coucil workers and everyone else would want something like that -

The trouble with this Government is that they IGNORED independent pay review for NHS staff. And this was before Covid with inflation 2%. It's this Government that got NHS into this mess. There is no shortage of IT engineers, financiers, accountants or truck drivers in this country. Because their pay is determined by the market and the private enterprise pays the going rate to ensure they have the work force. NHS pay is set by the Government. So one has to know enough about politics if one wants to understand the issue. Even now the Government is refusing us the right to work in conditions where we can SAFELY look after our patients. Strike has always been the last resort. However if the Government isn't engaging in good faith talks what else can we do? Do you honestly think my brain is functioning at my full capacity at 7:30 am when I have spent the previous 12 hours on my feet without a tea break? Never mind 1 hour break as per Health and Safety? Just because my colleagues had decided enough is enough and left the profession? We are bright people on NHS. We can multi task, we can communicate, we can deal with emergencies. All we are asking is to pay us enough money to ensure enough staff is available to provide SAFE care.

I lived in Canada for 4 years. Public sector jobs are the most coveted over there. Incidentally Canada isn't known for bombing out remote parts of the world at every opportunity.

I bet your job did not involve even 10% of the difficult decisions doctors make alongside the risk of causing death or serious harm if you made a mistake.

Were you attending trauma calls or crash calls when you were in your 20s?

Your attitudes are disgusting.

What I find most difficult about my job is putting one foot in front the other at 4 o'clock in the morning with my brain screaming for a well overdue break after 8 hours on the feet, still 4 hours to go and the ward sister saying "I have no one to break relieve you". Whist the decisions I make might well affect my patients to the the rest of their lives, whether for better or worse. If I make a mistake ultimately the Trust's insurance will pay. The trouble is I don't want to make mistakes so I am focusing hard while physically and mentally exhausted. How does this compare to a stressful corporate or a supermarket job? As for our pensions- we do have generous pensions. We just don't live long enough to enjoy them. I no longer believe you have doctors in your family. You wouldn't be writing this kind of posts if you did.

At Purplesilkpyjamas.... Apologies, the previous post is in response to the DistinguishedSocialCommenator's post

No worries. I did a double take then realised we are on the same side. The ignorance is breathtaking. I have only seen such nasty posts about doctors once before. It was from a very twisted person who had failed to get into medical school.

Unfortunately your post shows lack of understanding.

Appointments and operations are cancelled every day due to lack of skilled staff, not just on strike days.

Beds are now placed in the middle of bays due to lack of capacity. This creates on average 7 beds on a ward, 7 extra patients to care for, further increasing an unmanageable work load. But there is still not enough beds, so appointments/operations cancelled.

Many trusts are currently not recruiting into vacant posts due to lack of funding. Up and coming newly qualified nurses are unemployed… no joke! Have a look on the nhs website how many band 5 jobs there are in your area and consider the huge uni intakes that qualify every six months!!! Unfilled vacancies means cancelled appointments/operations.

I could go on and on but it just falls on deaf ears.

The strikes are about patient safety, because this cannot go on. Waiting lists are absolutely huge, A&E waits embarrassingly astronomical… the bottom line is there IS NOT ENOUGH STAFF BECAUSE THE PAY IS RUBBISH AND WORKING CONDITIONS ARE AWFUL!!!

Take away the right to strike. Literally and I mean literally hardly any nurses truly striked anyway as they genuinely cannot afford to forgo a days pay.

PROFESSIONALS ARE SCREAMING FROM THE ROOF TOPS THAT YOUR APPOINTMENTS AND OPERATIONS WILL STILL BE CANCELLED BECAUSE THERE IS NOT ENOUGH STAFF, FUNDING OR BEDS TO FACILITATE THE POPULATION!!!!

But yeah… probs best to just take away the right to strike 😂😂😂

😂My sentiments exactly

On the lack of skilled staff:

Today I spoke with two doctors who explained to me that there is a huge and deliberately created bottleneck for GP training places. At the same time there is a lack of GPs all over the country. Anyone could see that some of these skill shortages have been created on purpose. We are also the only country in the world which has opened its training schemes to any doctor from any country, so that our home grown staff are competing for jobs. What an absolute cock up. I'm absolutely praying the Tories don't get back in.