THE decision by the Junior Doctors Committee (JDC) of the BMA to ballot for industrial action is a courageous stand against the government’s imposition of a new contract – as if the Junior Doctors were slave labour!
This contract seeks to impose excessive unsocial hours working, to enable ‘seven-day working’, which is central to the government’s drive to hand over the whole NHS to private providers. The JDC condemns the government proposals – to extend plain time working from 7am to 10pm Monday to Saturday and to remove vital safeguards, such as banding, which discourage employers from making Junior Doctors work dangerously long hours, and to see pay progression no longer steadily linked to training and experience – as totally unacceptable.
It was this diktat that prompted the JDC to call a special meeting on 26th September and to vote to ballot for industrial action. However, this is not just an issue for Junior Doctors. Since 2011, the government has made it clear that it sees ‘contract reform’ as the key for achieving seven-day working throughout the NHS. If it is allowed to dictate to the Junior Doctors all the NHS trade unions will be next!
Prime Minister David Cameron’s first post election speech on the 18th May was ‘On a seven-day NHS’. He said that seven-day working ‘is going to deliver the transformation set out in the plan’. The plan he was referring to is the Five Year Forward View (FYFV) of Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England.
This is a five year plan to impose 1, ‘new models of care’ to replace the ‘outdated models of delivery’ (i.e. the District General Hospitals and GP surgeries), and 2, a ‘new modern workforce’. The FYFV promises that, provided the new modern workforce is brought in and the new care models imposed, then it will be possible to guarantee ‘productive investment’ (i.e. profits for incoming private companies.) The FYFV is the plan to impose an American health system in the UK and seven-day working is at the centre of it.
The new ‘modern workforce’ will have to deliver huge productivity increases of 2-3%pa, new ways of working, flexibility, skill mix changes with ‘new roles’ such as Physicians’ Associates (that is, dumbed down medical training as in the Shape of Training review), local pay, and changes to national terms and conditions.
Throughout the whole of the NHS the government aims to deliver seven-day services without increasing the wage bill, largely through cutting unsocial hours payments. The government and employers are, in fact, pushing for a drastic reduction in unsocial hours payments for one million NHS staff on Agenda For Change contracts.
There is no place for trade unions in this new vision of a privatised NHS! The Junior Doctors are therefore fighting the battle for every NHS worker and every NHS user and every NHS trade unionist! They must not be allowed to fight alone!
The struggle is now being engaged. There is a huge groundswell of feeling for industrial action by Junior Doctors, as they see the prospects of decent working conditions and providing good care for patients in the NHS being pulled out from under them. It would be criminal to let them fight alone!
The BMA conference must be recalled. It must instruct the Consultants Committee to think again, and resist imposition of their contracts, and to form a common struggle with the Junior Doctors. They must stand with the Junior Doctors. A recalled BMA must also affiliate to the TUC and place itself alongside the millions of workers who not only depend on the NHS but are prepared to take action to defend it!
The government is now planning to do to the clinical staff what they did to the ancillary workers in the 1980s, when they outsourced catering and cleaning etc to private companies which then slashed workers’ wages and terms and conditions. And then cut the numbers by half. The Junior Doctors must not fight alone. The BMA must demand that the TUC take action to stop this attack on the NHS, which is an attack on every trade unionist.
The TUC must call a general strike to stop the Tories imposing this disgraceful contract onto the Junior Doctors and to stop the privatisation of the NHS!
