THE BMA leadership have allowed themselves to be taken for a ride by Health Secretary Hunt!
The government that imposed provocation after provocation onto the junior doctors, pledging that it could do no other because it was bound by a 7-day NHS pledge contained in its General Election Manifesto, has been allowed to crawl out from under the rock of its own making.
As was made clear by the way that questions of national sovereignty were kept out of the Queen’s Speech, and by the way that the issue of the imposed war with the junior doctors for a 7-day NHS only rated an oblique one sentence mention, the Cameron Tories were terrified that a massive strike action by junior doctors alongside other trade unionists to defend the NHS was in the making.
Further, Cameron and Hunt were fearful that such an explosion of mass anger would blow up its campaign to ‘Remain’ in the EU, which is its number one priority. The brave and irreconcilable Hunt therefore rapidly turned into his opposite, and rushed in to try and defuse the struggle, at least until after June 23, EU referendum day.
The Tory duo were aided by the fact that the BMA leaders were even more terrified than they were, and jumped over themselves to try to avoid the massive crisis by proposing to the junior doctors that they surrender, by making major concessions to the Tories.
It is this crisis that produced the new offer from the previously irreconcilable Hunt. It is to go to a referendum of the junior doctors, with voting commencing on June 17th till July 1st, with the result to be announced on July 6th. With the EU referendum taking place on June 23, if the Cameron government is still in office by July 6, Hunt and Cameron will be free to resume the war when the junior doctors reject their offer.
That resumption will be all the more bitter since the junior doctors will know that they were cheated by their leaders out of an enormous opportunity to bring down Hunt and Cameron, when their leaders rushed in to make a rotten compromise that prevented their mass action alongside the TUC trade unions taking place.
One of the big issues of the current situation is that while Hunt and Co are desperate to postpone the battle, the BMA leaders are so fearful of the consequences of the situation that they have actually rushed in to make major concessions to the Tories.
Those who find this hard to believe may well believe the Daily Telegraph.
It noted in its front page on Thursday 19th May that: ‘The BMA backed down on a previous refusal to negotiate on weekend pay, having previously insisted that all hours worked at such times should attract premium rates.’
It added: ‘It means the government will be saved from the prospect of crippling strikes in the run-up to the EU referendum.’ It continued: ‘Under the terms, all juniors will see basic pay rise by about 10%. Those who work less than one weekend in eight will do so on basic rates.’
In fact, the basic pay rise is to be reduced from 13.5% to between 10% and 11%. Weekends will no longer be divided up between normal and unsocial hours. Instead, a system of supplements will be paid which depend on how many weekends a doctor works over the course of a year, while extra pay for night shifts is to be reduced from 50% to 37%.
The BMA betrayal on unsocial hours at the weekends has enormous importance. If accepted, it will make it easier for the government to redefine and reduce unsocial hours for 1.1 million other NHS staff on Agenda for Change contracts.
Doctors must reject the Hunt-BMA rotten compromise and vote to bin this deal. They must continue to build their links with all of the TUC trade unions, since the defence of the NHS is not just a job for junior doctors – it is a vital job for all trade unionists, whose lives and the lives of their families depend on the NHS.
The doctors must also resolve the crisis of their own leadership by electing new leaders who will not hesitate, once the Hunt-BMA deal is dumped, to call strike actions to be supported by all trade unionists to scrap the rotten contract, bring down the Tory government and bring in a workers government and socialism. This is the struggle that is directly ahead!
