The contract is getting imposed, but only on new FY1s. Jeremy Hunt has stated that we would be implicitly accepting his agenda by taking up our job offers. http://bit.ly/23akBzj
Complete this survey if you would consider co-signing a letter en mass along with other incoming FY1s, refusing to accept your job posts under Hunt’s imposed contract.
Share it widely on social media.
Background:
• Foundation trusts have legal autonomy over imposing Hunt’s contract on us, their new FY1’s.
• Unlike Jeremy Hunt, foundation trust CEO’s are not hell-bent on beating down a generation of young doctors. They aren't politicians. Our action might even stimulate some of them into our defence, since managers generally aren’t happy to see their most inexperienced and junior staff bullied and degraded. They’re struggling to fill rotas under the new contract as it is.
• Without FY1’s, hospitals wouldn’t be able to function. If 10, 20 or 30% of the incoming FY1’s at the same hospital wrote a joint letter to their future foundation trust CEO, refusing to work under the imposed contract then it would send a very strong message.
• Our junior doctor colleagues have stood strong on the picket lines outside hospitals on our behalf whilst we’ve been inside doing our Student Assistantships and legally unable to strike. Now is our chance to support them with strong action. Yes it’s an extreme tactic, yet these are extreme circumstances and we’ve run out of options.
• We didn’t sweat through years of medical school and mountains of debt to be bullied and belittled. This strategy could have a powerful effect on the dispute which currently hangs in the balance; we’re stronger than the politicians realise.
Our concerns with the junior doctor contract:
• Patient safety – tired doctors make mistakes.
• Staff safety – doctors die at the wheel every year whilst driving back from work whilst exhausted.
• Equality – the contract openly admits that it discriminates against women.
• Saturday pay – working on a Saturday evening is not the same as a Tuesday morning.
• Guardian role – we need proper safeguards to ensure that hospitals do not work us into exhaustion.
• NROC pay – the new contract puts it at far below minimum wage.
• Imposition – we want a Secretary of State who will listen to doctors and listen to the Patients’ Association who are telling him not to do this.
• Privatisation – this contract is ultimately about reducing staff costs and making NHS services more attractive for private takeover.