Last week, the Scottish Government offered junior doctors in Scotland a 14.5% pay uplift for the years 2022 – 2024, based on a 6.5% uplift this year and an additional 3% consolidated pay added to the DDRB-recommended 4.5% which had already been awarded from April 2022.
In addition, the Scottish Government have recognised that junior doctors have lost confidence in the way that we are remunerated and offered to tackle and prevent pay erosion through a Junior Doctor pay bargaining review taskforce, to report by September 2023.
The offer was widely reported and stoked a new flurry of debate and engagement across the wider BMA membership and in BMA committees, but also in our messes and break spaces up and down Scotland. This commitment and the industrial literacy shown by our members is what propelled our campaign and our strike ballot to deliver an overwhelming mandate to achieve change. Doctors have been burned out, angry, and equivocating about working in a deteriorating NHS for years. The difference is that now, we’re organised. You made your voices crystal clear and placed a huge amount of trust in the Scottish Junior Doctors Committee (SJDC) to reverse the historical wrong of clinicians’ pay erosion.
Our collective actions brought the Scottish Government to the table to negotiate after previously having rebuffed us. It was a recognition more needed to be done, and it was a change in course that we welcomed. We fully engaged with the following pay negotiations, caried out constructively and in good faith. The negotiating team and I took this responsibility extremely seriously and know both the reason you put us in that room and that we were only there because of the membership. Now, it is right that – as the people to whom we are accountable – every junior doctor in BMA Scotland has the opportunity to have their say on what the Government has proposed.
So, from Monday 5th June, a consultative ballot will ask you whether you want to accept or reject the Scottish Government’s offer. The ballot is open for one week, closing on Monday 12th June at 23:59. We will announce the result of the ballot and our next steps on Tuesday 13th June, whichever path you instruct us to take with your votes. SJDC are presenting this to you neutrally: the most useful and effective message is one that comes directly from you. We’ve previously contacted junior doctor members in Scotland with a message about the offer: that can be found here, alongside further details here.
This isn’t like our strike ballot –it will be conducted via email, so keep an eye on your inboxes and notifications rather than on your doormat for an orange envelope – and our strike mandate will remain in force for 6 months whatever the outcome of this vote. Though this is a consultative ballot by name, SJDC and the negotiating team will act on the decision that we, the membership, make together.
We are on a path towards pay restoration for our profession and the outcome of this vote will guide the next steps we take on that journey. Keep your eyes peeled for our FAQs and for further information before the vote. We are continually building the BMA into a stronger and more powerful union, and we now have more members than ever. We’ve fought hard to ensure that we’re no longer ignored- now is the time for doctors to use the voice we have found to set our course towards securing the level of pay that we deserve.
Chris Smith, chair SJDC
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