When is an 11% pay rise actually a 22% cut? When it is offered by Jeremy Hunt
It is as This Blog suggested yesterday: Jeremy Hunt (pictured) said he was offering junior doctors an 11 per cent pay rise, to fend off the possibility of strike action at the busiest time of the NHS year – but doctor’s aren’t stupid.
As This Writer suggested, they have done their sums and can demonstrate that Hunt’s offer is nothing more than a filthy con.
All he has done is further diminish himself in the opinions of anyone whose opinion is worth knowing. The best that can be said about this is, aren’t you glad he isn’t Chancellor of the Exchequer?
Here’s The Guardian, which broke the story of the pay offer yesterday, with the accounts of just two doctors who would be affected:
Take Dr Milo Hollingsworth. He’s a junior doctor working in the neurosurgery unit of North Bristol NHS Trust. As he explains: “I am paid £27k base salary for working 8-5pm Monday to Friday. I am paid a further 50% for working nights, weekends and bank holidays. I have worked every bank holiday of 2015. These changes would see my base pay increased to £29k but my out-of-hours pay cut [and] would leave me with a yearly income of £32k from next August; £8k less than this year.”
He adds: “We’ll be getting paid less for doing the same job working for a busier, less well-resourced health service, which is under the strain of inadequate care in the community and an expanding population, many of whom have increasingly complex health needs such as those surviving cancer and the elderly.”
Another junior doctor emailed to say: “Many junior doctors are angered and appalled at the way his offer is portrayed by him and also your article as an 11% increase in our salary. It is not. It is more like a 22% reduction in salary. This is because our salary includes a banding supplement, typically 50% of our basic pay, to pay for our compulsory unsocial hours (weekends, evenings and nights). These are not optional hours nor optional pay supplements; they are essential to normal NHS staffing.”
Like Hollingsworth, he sees a pay cut looming. “Mr Hunt’s proposal is to remove our banding (ie, reduce our total salary by 33%) and increase our basic pay by 11% – ie, a net reduction of 22%. Why should we take a pay cut and be asked to work more unsocial hours than we already do? We would like to see our families and friends as much as the next person. Is it too much to be remunerated properly to give up such time?”
Source: Is Jeremy Hunt’s pay offer a good deal for doctors and the NHS? | Society | The Guardian
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It is exactly the same as what this Tory Shambles have done with their slogan of being the Party of the Worker by cutting Taxe for the Low Paid. Low Tax, high wage and low Welfare State is their slogan. So from next year my NI contributions will be going up by approx anything from £40 to £100 a month extra to pay for my future State Pension, the Government could have told all Large Companies to carry the extra burden, but no they gave them the choice, they could pay it or pass the extra cost onto the employee, so any saving in Tax we see will be taken in National Insurance, but no one seems to have picked up on that, so to the Junior Doctors, Look at what is being proposed and look deeper becouse there will be a Bite somewhere.
That Hunt responding to a strike threat, from key service providers, by finding a pay increase (alleged) will just signal to the many other key service providers that the austerity window is now closed and it is now open season to threaten a strike to pull a long awaited new pay deal. Great…..the winter of discontent – Act 2.
As for the doctors responses to the offer this just proves how little research the Hunt, and his so called professional advisors, have done on the real facts on the ground ,before peeing the medicos off even further with this shallow ill thought out con. The Cons keep failing to think through and research their plans of action always knee jerk decisions doomed to failure and peasant bashing accusations.
Is it any reason his name was mispronounced on the ‘news’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJbhHxts3hw
Jeremy hunt rhymes with?
Grunt.
Well, Hunt is the man who actually said he didn’t understand the Parliamentary expenses rules, but he only made this “admission” when caught embezzling money to which he was not entitled.
This is what the anti strike laws are about to make it near impossible to strike and to replace any strikers with agency workers, so they can drive down the pay.
Emigrate! Your skills and dedication is needed and valued in many other countries. How about Australia where I live?
That’s a very nice offer for the doctors; not so wonderful for the people of the UK, though. And of course it also helps Jeremy Hunt and the Tories with their ultimate goal, which is the destruction of the National Health Service in the UK.