Junior doctor strike: Union's pay demands unrealistic, says Steve Barclay

[thenewoc]

What are the BMA offering in terms of efficiencies to help fund the 35%? The rail unions had to accept some after all..

Don't know but it seems a ridiculous staffing structure if people are being held in JD roles for 10 years before making it to consultant. They could probably do with some intermediary roles with gradually more responsibilities. The Trust's should have the autonomy to advance people up through pay bands.

 

[Werewolf]

Thats two completely different things and lets not forget every time the government tries to, for example, crack down on benefit fraud its slammed as 'unfair and cruel' in the lefty media.

Where anything is provided 'free' by the government it will always be abused and subject to fraud - covid has proven that quite clearly. The cost of preventing fraud has to be balanced against the cost of the actual fraud unfortunately.

Mainly because they way they do it is cruel and unfair and usually hits those that need the help by starting off with the objective to actively refuse and punish not to actually assess and help?
Also possibly because benefit fraud is tiny compared to mistakes (usually in the governments favour) in decisions and the amount not claimed that people are eligible for?

In the case of covid the government ignored even the most basic of any fraud measures, they didn't require companies to have filed taxes, or to have been registered prior to March 2020, and didn't bother doing things like checking that the people applying for the money were actually working for or owned the companies, or that the cash was going into accounts that the government knew were linked to the companies that were supposedly applying for the loans.
This is stuff that could have been checked in a couple of minutes per application by simply looking at the governments own records at HMRC and companies house before fraudsters got tens/hundreds of thousands at a time.

And I won't mention the PPE fraud with the VIP fraud lane that meant if you were a mate of a cabinet minister and had just started a business with £100 in the bank you could get a contract to supply a couple of hundred of thousands of bin liners as PPE faster than any approved supplier who had actual PPE in stock could get an answer on the phone.

 

[StriderX]

Lets not forget that a lot of that equipment was unusable probably entirely because of the lack of experienced traders doing the contracts leaving us mountains of junk wasting away costing more every day because we have to keep paying to store it all.

But yes it's the people saving lives every day that are the problem and the ridiculous people in this country lap it up.

 

[Minstadave]

Surely they can promote to higher bands though. I accept they don't choose the band rates.

They can't. You progress through pay based on years of experience.

 

[n111ck]

But it’s costing a shed load of money that could be used to increase the wage of valuable members of society.

So the government should just give in to effective union blackmail and make services more and more unaffordable?

Not to mention that a pay rise isn't a one off hit.. unlike a strike.

 

[Minstadave]

2k per shift is also part of the problem don't you think?

It's not the standard rate, this is specific to the strikes. We can't ethically refuse to cover the JD work but can make it very expensive.

 

[Minstadave]

Don't know but it seems a ridiculous staffing structure if people are being held in JD roles for 10 years before making it to consultant. They could probably do with some intermediary roles with gradually more responsibilities.

That's exactly how it works. A doctor starts as a Foundation doctor, progress through Foundaton Years 1/2 to speciality training which is upto 8 years, all 10 years are under the Junior Doctor terminology but for many of them you are what used to be called a Registrar and are pretty senior. I would manage a whole Childrens cardiac intensive care or Tertiary NICU alone at night with a Consultant on the phone if needed all whilst being a "Junior Doctor". The terminology is stupid and misleading.

As you progress through training your pay goes up but that's outside of Trust control.

 

[n111ck]

Mainly because they way they do it is cruel and unfair and usually hits those that need the help by starting off with the objective to actively refuse and punish not to actually assess and help?
Also possibly because benefit fraud is tiny compared to mistakes (usually in the governments favour) in decisions and the amount not claimed that people are eligible for?

In the case of covid the government ignored even the most basic of any fraud measures, they didn't require companies to have filed taxes, or to have been registered prior to March 2020, and didn't bother doing things like checking that the people applying for the money were actually working for or owned the companies, or that the cash was going into accounts that the government knew were linked to the companies that were supposedly applying for the loans.
This is stuff that could have been checked in a couple of minutes per application by simply looking at the governments own records at HMRC and companies house before fraudsters got tens/hundreds of thousands at a time.

And I won't mention the PPE fraud with the VIP fraud lane that meant if you were a mate of a cabinet minister and had just started a business with £100 in the bank you could get a contract to supply a couple of hundred of thousands of bin liners as PPE faster than any approved supplier who had actual PPE in stock could get an answer on the phone.

Fraud is either an issue that needs to be dealt with or its not.

No one is doubting the civil services incompetence particularly when setting up schemes quickly.

The government was being slammed for not providing enough PPE so is it any wonder they got desperate particularly when the whole world was in the same situation.
Again the cost of fraud had to be balanced to the need to secure as much PPE as possible.

 

[Minstadave]

I will stand to benefit if the NHS collapses and becomes a private entity. My wages will increase and so will the working conditions. What will decrease is the general health and probably the life expectancy of the population.

Absolutely this. If the NHS went under we'd likely be on double the pay or more in Paeds/NICU.

 

[StriderX]

Wouldn't have needed to be desperate if they'd just made sensible precautions after Exercise Cygnus, but rather busy self-destructing to care about piddling risks that would never happen.

 

[Minstadave]

Wouldn't have needed to be desperate if they'd just made sensible precautions after Exercise Cygnus, but rather busy self-destructing to care about piddling risks that would never happen.

Even now after the pandemic no lessons have been learnt. There's still constantly full hospitals, massive ED queues, neglected community services.

 

[n111ck]

Wouldn't have needed to be desperate if they'd just made sensible precautions after Exercise Cygnus, but rather busy self-destructing to care about piddling risks that would never happen.

Yes prioritising the once in a hundred year pandemic makes sense, well at least in hindsight..

 

[Doobedoo]

So the government should just give in to effective union blackmail and make services more and more unaffordable?

Not to mention that a pay rise isn't a one off hit.. unlike a strike.

Are you saying they don’t deserve a pay rise?

 

[Goodie]

He was arguing the other week that doctors are more likely to be replaced by AI/Automation than a bricklayer.

Petition to change name to MrWrong

 

[Minstadave]

Yes prioritising the once in a hundred year pandemic makes sense, well at least in hindsight..

Widespread international travel is a pretty recent thing and makes pandemics more likely and much harder to contain. Whilst you can't have vast amount of resource going unused you should have some capacity in the system to meet unexpected demand.

In the current state of the NHS we can't manage the normal winter time demand without widespread cancellation of elective work, its embarrassing how bad its got in the last decade.

 

[Roar87]

And I won't mention the PPE fraud with the VIP fraud lane that meant if you were a mate of a cabinet minister and had just started a business with £100 in the bank you could get a contract to supply a couple of hundred of thousands of bin liners as PPE faster than any approved supplier who had actual PPE in stock could get an answer on the phone.

That was actually a scheme set up which was open to all MPs from any party, not just cabinet ministers. This is made out to be some scheme to benefit Tory Ministers when actually it was simply a way of trying to procure PPE from sources trusted by people in government and parliament. This is like just a lie that's repeated over and over without anyone bothering to fact check it.

The idea was to treat offers of PPE with greater urgency if they came from a supplier recommended by ministers, government officials or MPs and members of the House of Lords, from any party.

Covid: Government's PPE 'VIP lane' unlawful, court rules

A judge says it was unlawful to give two companies preferential treatment when awarding PPE contracts.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[StriderX]

Lol 'trusted' is a farcical way to get around nepotism and corruption.

There were already plenty of PPE providers WITH experience in the field to work with the government and they were flatly ignored, sorry but no cigar for you hombre.

 

[n111ck]

Are you saying they don’t deserve a pay rise?

I think pay rises need to be affordable or funded by efficiencies.

I think trying to claim 35% was ridiculous and the union has set itself up to fail for its members.

I also think the unions are trying to use their members, strikes and the public to serve political aims rather than just to get pay rises - although luckily the whole 'new winter of discontent' thing that was supposed to propel Labour into government has failed to materialise.

 

[n111ck]

Widespread international travel is a pretty recent thing and makes pandemics more likely and much harder to contain. Whilst you can't have vast amount of resource going unused you should have some capacity in the system to meet unexpected demand.

In the current state of the NHS we can't manage the normal winter time demand without widespread cancellation of elective work, its embarrassing how bad its got in the last decade.

PPE does expire so stockpiling isn't as simple as it may seem.

Also if you said in early 2019 what was about to happen people would have just laughed in your face.

 

[n111ck]

That was actually a scheme set up which was open to all MPs from any party, not just cabinet ministers. This is made out to be some scheme to benefit Tory Ministers when actually it was simply a way of trying to procure PPE from sources trusted by people in government and parliament. This is like just a lie that's repeated over and over without anyone bothering to fact check it.

Covid: Government's PPE 'VIP lane' unlawful, court rules

A judge says it was unlawful to give two companies preferential treatment when awarding PPE contracts.

www.bbc.co.uk

From your own link:

Mrs Justice O'Farrell ruled that while the use of the VIP lane - officially known as the high priority lane - was unlawful, she found that both of the companies' offers "justified priority treatment" on their merits and were "very likely" to have been awarded contracts even without it.