Delegates at the British Medical Association’s (BMA) annual conference have voted to press ministers to agree to a 30% increase over five years to make up for real-terms cuts to their salaries over the last 14 years.
Some doctors who supported the motion cited striking rail workers as an inspiration for how groups of workers should pursue pay claims with Boris Johnson’s administration.
Frontline doctors said years of pay freezes and annual salary uplifts of 1% had caused the real value of their take-home pay to fall by almost a third since 2008. They now want “full pay restoration” to return the value of their pay to 2008 levels, and have instructed the BMA to pursue that goal with a government that has made clear it will not hand public sector workers sizeable salary increases in case it fuels already rampant inflation.
Full story in The Guardian, 28 June 2022