The spectacle of strikes is becoming more and more frequent. Having thought the nurses strikes had come to end with the RCN accepting the government’s offer, a second vote, from a different union, has rejected the offer. More strikes for nurses. Teachers, university lecturers, junior doctors. It goes on and on.
Everyone is suffering from the cost of living crises. Inflation is still at around 10%, although it should start to come down soon.
There’s a lot being said about public sector wage hikes.
The increase in public sector wages will inevitably hit the private sector. We all pay tax, and so when the government agrees to pay more (if they do), it is everyone’s money they are spending. We must never forget that. Furthermore, higher wages are inflationary. It is true that public sector wage rises are less inflationary than private sector. Raise the wages of a car maker and that increase gets passed onto the consumer. Public sector services aren’t charged for (aside from through taxes). But significant rises in public sector pay increases money supply into the economy and the Bank of England may have to counter that inflationary pressure with higher interest rates. I’ll take a guess here, but I reckon very few people would like to see any more increases in their mortgage rates.
There is also a lot of talk about who gets paid what. We get to hear a lot about junior doctors being paid the same as a Starbucks barista. Its certainly true that a first year junior doctor gets paid around £29,000 – about the same hourly rate as a barista. But the reality is that a typical first year doctor gets paid £37,000, and their salaries rise with experience. After a few years, once classified as in core training, a junior doctor sees more like £56,000. Their careers go on and as they gain more experience, they increase their salary. Our barista is still on £14 per hour. NHS staff also enjoy an extra 20p in the £ contribution to their defined benefit pension scheme. That means that average package for a nurse is around £50,000.
Don’t get me wrong. I think they are worth every penny of what they are paid. But the argument that there are too few wanting to join the profession is not supported by the massive over subscription of people applying to go to medical school. Our problem of supply is that we have far too few medical school places.