My very basic understanding of it (although its much more complex than this)

is that when doctors currently work weekends (or other long hours outside their shift pattern - which they seem to have to do because there are no enough of them) then they get paid extra for it (i.e. overtime rates) but because the Government is trying to move to the NHS being 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, working weekends would no longer ordinarily be regarded as outside of normal hours and so they would just get paid at their usual rate for those shifts save that the government has now offered to pay extra for working one saturday in 4.

In return the government seems to be saying that they will increase their basic pay by 11% (presumably to offset the loss in overtime payments) and will put more safeguards in place to ensure they don't have to work so many long shifts.

I assume the doctors are saying that unless the government recruits more doctors then regardless of what the contract says they will still end up working extra hours anyway but will just get paid less?

The government does seem to be using a sledghammer to crack a nut with a lot of these situations. Give was the same with the teachers. It seems to become a matter of doctors v Hunt or teachers v Gove when it appears that a lot of the actual issues are quite narrow and could probably be resolved with a bit more of a collaborative approach.

Posted By: Jim on February 11th 2016 at 11:46:29

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