Junior Hospital Doctors across the country are taking action over their claim for a 40-hour week and realistic overtime rates.
The Labour Government is offering them a miserable 10 per cent of the basic rate for 'on call' duty and 30 per cent for overtime actually worked. No wonder the junior doctors are up in arms about this miserable offer.
Castle claims that if she gives the JHDs what they want then it will break the £6 pay limit. So hospital workers are once again struggling for decent pay and conditions against Government wage restraint - just like the ancillary workers in 1972 and 1973, and the nurses in 1974. Each time the argument has been that if we hold back on wages then we can improve on the social services.
What has happened to the promises? The NHS has never faced such a severe crisis in the 27 years of its existence. Secret documents obtained by the National Co-ordinating Committee Against Cuts in the NHS spell out that the cuts are going to be made by reducing the amount of money that is allocated to new buildings and the renovation of existing buildings and equipment.
Staff cuts are also planned. The labour-intensive NHS spends 70 per cent of its budget on wages. 'save' money nurses are being made redundant, and when ancillary workers leave their jobs they are not being replaced.
The JHDs are drastically overworked, and this of course affects the patient care that they are able to Even if the junior doctors win their claim for a BYC.
overtime.
There is no shortage of doctors.
shortage in the NHS.
to training.
To basic 40-hour week this bad situation will not change. They will continue to work 80 hours or more a week, and patient care will continue to deteriorate. All that will change is that the JHDs will get paid more for this If the JHDs are to win their claim and improve both their own conditions and those of their patients, they will have to take up the fight to extend the NHS and ensure that more doctors are employed in the health The policies of the Labour Government, however, are creating a deliberate The racist policies of the Government prevent immigrant doctors from Pakistan and India practising in Britain. Of the 13,000 men and women who applied for places in medical schools, only 3,240 were accepted because insufficient funds are allocated The working class movement has a vested interest in the fight of the JHDs. It must give its support to their struggle for better conditions. But the labour movement must also insist that such support is conditional on the JHDs fighting to defend the NHS and having no truck with the consultants, whose policies are geared to bring the NHS into total collapse.
Support from the labour movement can guarantee victory for the JHDs. At the same time it can show the JHDs that their future, and the future of the NHS, lies in an alliance between them and the labour moveProblem with jobs demo was its 'protest