‘Claps don’t pay bills’, ‘pay or we fly away’, ‘reduced to clear’, ‘would you stay?’ All slogans on signs being waved at Manchester Royal Infirmary as doctors walked out in an historic strike as 72-hours of industrial action commenced.
The prognosis for the NHS that these doctors have given is bleak - pay for junior doctors has decreased by 26 per cent since 2008, with some paid around £14 per hour, says the British Medical Association (BMA), one of the two unions taking industrial action. Coffee chain Pret-a-Manger recently gave a pay rise to its staff, with the potential to earn up to £14.10 an hour.
This ‘erosion’ of pay has left doctors feeling ‘undervalued’ while working a job requiring daily life-or-death decisions, pushing highly trained medics to take their skills elsewhere, they say. The declining staff numbers are set to the backdrop of shifts are only becoming more pressured - more people are relying on the NHS than ever, a Covid backlog spells years of catching up with increasingly fewer pairs of hands, and a broken system sees the 'sickest patients waiting 12 hours for a bed'.
