Yesterday, 25 March, the British Medical Association (BMA) announced six new days of strike action. The news followed the union members’ vote to reject the government’s latest offer on pay and jobs. Following the announcement, supposedly-socialist health secretary Wes Streeting took to the Commons to continue his streak of bashing the doctors’ union.
His excuse for paltry pay offers this time? Well, the economic fallout of the war in Iran, of course. As if he was just brimming with constructive pay offers before Netanyahu and Trump started their latest bombing campaign, the little fucking weasel.
Strike action
On 24 March, the BMA officially rejected the government’s latest pay offer. This had included pay uplifts for doctors after the successful completion of their ARCP (annual review of competence progression). Likewise, it also committed to a reform of the nodal points of the pay scale structure.
However, the union called the government out for moving the goalposts during the negotiations. Resident Doctors Committee (RDC) negotiators said that, at the last moment, the Government reduced the original investment on the pay element of the offer. Worse still, they said they’d stretch this over a three-year period.
Given this appalling behaviour from the government, the RDC announced that residents will stage a six-day walkout. This will last from 7 April until 13 April.
Streeting — moving the goalposts
RDC chair Jack Fletcher explained that the government had failed to deliver on pay offers, in spite of weeks of negotiations. He said:
We have been negotiating in good faith for weeks to try and end the simultaneous pay and jobs crises for resident doctors. Frustratingly we had been making good progress right up until the point, in the last two weeks, when the Government began to shift the goalposts.
As talks progressed it became clear that the money proposed for pay increases was now going to be spread over three years. This is combined with today’s pay review body (DDRB) recommendation pointing to yet more years in which our pay, at best, barely treads water.
We have made abundantly clear throughout this dispute that our aim is pay restoration, and any deal that did not move us substantially in that direction was not going to fly.
We also cannot ignore that, thanks to global events, economic indicators now point to years of greatly increased inflation. We are simply not going to put an offer to doctors that risks locking in further erosion of pay at a time when doctors continue to leave the UK for other countries.
The strike would be the first industrial action from the RDC since last December. However, the union emphasised that doctors want to get on with their jobs, rather than standing on picket lines – and the RDC is hoping that the threat of action will make the government take the matter seriously.
Likewise, Fletcher re-stated his willingness to negotiate:
We are not closing the door on talks. We remain willing to negotiate and are eager to get a deal done if we can simply recapture the early positive spirit of negotiations. No strikes need to happen, but Government will need to act fast to prevent them.
Streeting’s newest excuse
However, Labour’s health secretary is clearly hellbent on doing anything but negotiating in good faith. Instead, he’s once again resorted to threats and excuses.
This time, Streeting bleated that the war in Iran meant there was no chance of a better pay offer. But, as a reminder, Streeting was making no-pay-rise offers long before Iran.
Speaking in the Commons today, 26 March, Streeting said:
The BMA has pointed to the war in Iran as reason to reject the deal, so let me spell out the consequences of what this country is facing.
This country wants to see de-escalation, a swift resolution to the conflict with a negotiated agreement that puts tough conditions on Iran and specifically its nuclear ambitions.
However, we are planning on the basis of a prolonged conflict because that is the prudent thing to do.
In that eventuality, there would be an impact on the economy and on the public finances. Were that to happen, a future offer to resident doctors will not look better than what is on offer today.
Doubling down
Worse still, he chose to double down with his threats against the union. Before now, his tactic consisted of blaming resident doctors for handing the next election to Reform —s and thus destroying the NHS. That, and an utterly farcical attempt to blame the BMA for ruining Christmas (genuinely).
However, Streeting is now threatening to renege on handing over the money that was already ringfenced to fund the government’s paltry pay offer to resident doctors.
He stated that the government’s patience for NHS disruption is running out, and issued an ultimatum: the BMA has until 2 April to call of the strike, or the government will spend the money on ‘minimising disruption’.
Let’s not mince words here. This is a health secretary speaking for a Labour government — supposedly the pro-union option — threatening to destroy months of negotiations in order to strong-arm workers out of a strike.
If Wes Streeting had any fucking shame, he wouldn’t be able to show his face above a red tie ever again. But at this point, the anti-union health secretary probably feels right at home in Starmer’s Labour, doesn’t he?
Featured image via the Canary
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