Having rejected the government’s pathetic below-inflation pay offer, junior doctors organised in the BMA are returning to the picket lines today, as part of a 72-hour walkout from 14-16 June.
Junior doctors have experienced a 26% real-terms wage cut over the last 15 years. The 5% ‘rise’ now offered by the Tories therefore falls far short. This is a slap in the face for those who worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic.
Rishi Sunak has described the BMA’s demand for full pay restoration as “unreasonable”. Yet the PM fails to mention the 43% pay rise that MPs have received since 2008!
Eager to outflank the Tories on the right, Starmer’s Labour has also accused the BMA of “living on another planet” – showing clearly which side of the class divide they stand on.
As always, it’s one rule for the ruling class and another for the rest of us.
#Juniordoctors are back on strike after an insulting 5% pay offer.
London comrades joined picket lines today to show solidarity, chat about the strike, and how we can kick capitalism out of the NHS.
Listen to what Joe, a junior doctor at UCLH, had to say:@bma_marxists pic.twitter.com/NwA6tNYIxu
— London Marxists (@LondonMarxists) June 14, 2023
Decline
The devastating impact of austerity and creeping privatisation has crushed doctors’ pay and conditions since the 2008 crash.
This has had horrifying consequences for patient safety too. Ambulance queues and painstaking waiting times are now the norm, with an estimated 500 people dying each week due to delays in receiving treatment.
Thanks to stagnant pay, low staffing, and unsustainable workloads, health staff are leaving the sector in their thousands.
This creates a vicious cycle. Already, there are 133,000 NHS vacancies, with many nurses taking early retirement, and junior doctors leaving to work abroad.
We must be clear about who is really behind this catastrophe: the Tories, the bosses and bankers, and the capitalist system as a whole.
We know that the money is there for a real pay rise, and for proper investment in the NHS. But it is currently lining the pockets of parasitic private healthcare bosses.
Struggles
We, junior doctors, are not alone in our struggle.
Hospital consultants, also organised in the BMA, are currently voting on whether to take industrial action. If the result – due at the end of the month – is positive, strikes are likely to follow on 20-21 July.
Junior doctors in Scotland are also set to strike next month, from 12-15 July, after BMA members rejected Holyrood’s offer of a 14.5% pay rise over two years.
And nurses in the RCN are currently re-balloting. It’s vital that they win their mandate, and that we begin to coordinate our action.
Unity
Joint walkouts should be organised at a rank-and-file level, by establishing cross-union strike committees. Our strength lies in our unity.
As one junior doctor told us: “If everyone in the hospital went on strike, we would get our pay rise today.”
Other public sector workers are also balloting, or already hold mandates for action.
Mass coordinated action across the whole labour movement – including a public sector wide strike – could easily bring down this fragile Tory government.
This struggle must be linked to the fight for bold socialist policies: to kick capitalism out of our NHS, and to address the dire problems facing the working class once and for all.
We say:
- Unite the strikes! For mass militant action to topple the Tories!
- For an inflation-busting pay rise! Make the billionaires pay for this crisis!
- Reverse privatisation, outsourcing, and austerity! For a fully nationalised NHS, run under democratic workers’ control!
Kick capitalism out of our NHS!
Below is the text of a leaflet that Socialist Appeal comrades working in the NHS are distributing on picket lines and inside workplaces, calling on other health workers to get organised and mobilise around a bold socialist programme.
If you would like to be involved in a campaign to kick capitalism out of the NHS, sign up here, and download this leaflet to print and hand out to your colleagues.
The NHS is in crisis. Everyone knows it. And for those of us working in it, we feel it every single day.
People are dying as a result – as many as 500 per week, by some estimates.
We need to end this. But first we need to understand why this catastrophe is occurring.
Funding for the NHS has been cut to pieces. And stepping in like vultures are private health companies. These leeches are already hoovering up as much as 25% of public healthcare spending. This means tens of billions of pounds of money is going straight into the parasites’ pockets.
This is just the beginning too. A poorly-functioning NHS – one that feels like it’s on the brink of collapse – provides the perfect excuse for further privatisation by the Tories, or even Starmer’s Labour.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, for example, has repeatedly advocated utilising the private sector to ‘bolster’ the NHS.
We must be clear: the problem is capitalism.
Profit-making, private interests, and the market have been allowed to seep into what should be a genuinely public service. Funding cuts too are the result of austerity, as the capitalists force us to pay for their crisis.
Already we, as NHS workers, are starting to fight back.
The struggles by junior doctors and nurses are part of a struggle for the very future of the NHS itself.
The creation of the NHS, 75 years ago this summer, was an historic concession won by the working class. It must be defended by any means necessary.
Now we must turn these defensive struggles into an offensive struggle. This means fighting for a bold socialist programme that can kick capitalism out of our NHS.
This means fighting for:
- Full reversal of all funding cuts, funded through expropriation of the billionaires and bankers.
- Full renationalisation of the NHS, under the control and management of health workers.
- Nationalisation – without compensation – of all outsourcing firms and private healthcare companies, to be integrated into the NHS.
- A crash recruitment and training programme, under trade union control, to end staff shortages.
- An above-inflation wage rise for all NHS staff, with future pay increases linked to prices.
This will not be easy. But all of the gains that our class has made have been fought for – including the NHS. Now we must fight once more for its future.
