Annie Johnson
In April 2023, NHS junior doctors took to industrial action to demand a pay restoration of thirty-five percent, in line with inflation. Some accuse junior doctors of putting patients in danger by striking, whilst others argue that doctors are already paid an ample salary. This rhetoric strikes me as harmful, and so I spoke to a junior doctor who helped to explain why.
Along with many other industries that have seen their workers voting to strike, junior doctors have faced an onslaught of negative rhetoric from the media. The mainstream media seem intent on comparing the demands of workers in different industries in an attempt to undermine their demands.
This was particularly effective during the junior doctor strike action, with media outlets making a direct comparison between doctors and nurses, for example. One article ran with the headline, ‘Junior doctors have less public support for strike than nurses and paramedics’.
Let’s Hear Firsthand…
I put this comparison to my junior doctor. Playing devil’s advocate, I asked, ‘Why do junior doctors deserve a pay rise when they are already paid so much more than nurses?’.
“The media seems intent on painting junior doctors as uber-privileged members of society”
She gave me the answer I was expecting, and the only sensible answer: nurses should be given a pay restoration as well, and the fact that junior doctors are striking is not an indication that they deserve a pay rise more than nurses, or any other workers taking industrial action.
She reminded me that nurses did, quite rightly, go on strike again from the 30th April to the 2nd May, and she spoke emotively about the staffing retention problems the NHS faces – most wards are run by nurses under the age of thirty, because nurses are leaving the profession at a startling rate.
“Nobody becomes a doctor for the money”
The media also seems intent on painting junior doctors as uber-privileged members of society, suggesting that the concept of strike action in their circumstances is audacious. One headline in particular read, ‘Junior doctors are tomorrow’s high earners, less stroppiness please’. I asked my junior doctor about this: ‘Why should junior doctors strike when they are some of the most privileged in society?’.
She admitted that yes, she feels privileged to have been able to study Medicine, and to be a doctor. But, she reminds me, she is currently in £70,000 worth of student debt. She pays for every exam she has to take, which start at £500 per exam and can reach £2000 each. She has to pay her indemnity insurance and BMA membership, both of which are compulsory. When I mention the salary of a consultant doctor, she emphasises that doctors will earn that salary if they reach consultant level. This can take twenty years, at which point a comparative salary of somebody with equivalent qualifications and experience in the private sector, would be far higher.
“Feeling guilty is something a junior doctor experiences every day”
But what is far more important, she reminds me, is that these strikes are not just about the money. Yes, junior doctors would like to be able to contemplate buying a home one day, but nobody becomes a doctor for the money. Doctors are there because they want to help people, and the current state of the NHS means that this mission is becoming increasingly difficult.
Media Rhetoric and Junior Doctors
This led us to discuss a tool which the media love to use when critiquing NHS strike action. Don’t junior doctors feel guilty when they go on strike? Surely they are putting lives at risk on strike days? My junior doctor provided two excellent responses to these questions.
“Junior doctors have as much right to demand a pay restoration as other workers”
Firstly, she emphasised that consultants and nurses have done an excellent job upholding NHS standards throughout the junior doctor strike action, and that media rhetoric suggesting otherwise is misleading and designed to provoke anti-strike sentiment within the public.
She highlights a specific example: the Telegraph reported that during strike action in England, mortality rates were up eleven percent compared to the five year average. The headline read: ‘Deaths rise as junior doctors go on strike’. But of course, what the Telegraph didn’t report, was that the mortality rate was up by fourteen percent in Wales, where no strike action was taking place.
And secondly, she told me that feeling guilty is something a junior doctor experiences every day, and is by no means limited to days of strike action. She and her colleagues are desperately working to uphold basic standards, in an understaffed and underfunded NHS, which has been set up by this government to fail. There are simply not enough resources to do more than tackle the urgent issues facing patients in her care. There is no slack in the system.
Junior doctors have as much right to demand a pay restoration as other workers taking industrial action. They want to work in the NHS, and they want to have the resources necessary to continue to perform their jobs properly. It’s time for the media to stop using weak tactics in an attempt to undermine the strikes taking place, and instead demand government action to prevent the necessity for strikes in the first place.
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Featured image courtesy of Ali Khademolhosseini on Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license found here.
