So, the gloves have come off over consultants’ terms and conditions.
A leaked document by the Foundation Trust Network has revealed the full extent of employers’ intentions. An end to CEAs, reduced SPAs, capped pensions and frozen increments on pay progression are just some of them.
We know we’re in difficult times. But, if you were running a foundation trust, would you seek the answer in undermining and compromising the most important members of your workforce, or would you try to inspire them to work together to find real solutions?
It’s an incredible shame that a sizable proportion of NHS employers preferred to collude in secrecy rather than air and share the challenge with their senior medical staff.
Unfortunately, they will now pay a price for this. Their bond of trust with the consultant body is weakened and doctors’ representatives are on guard.
We’ve started to see foundation trusts, with their greater independence, test national arrangements and offer non standard jobs. Sometimes they’ve done this for the right reasons, but frequently they’ve not.
Maybe it was inevitable that they would test consultants’ nationally agreed terms and conditions more directly at some point. I’m sure the Foundation Trust Network, or even your individual foundation trust, will try to smooth things over by claiming it was just a discussion document. Don’t be fooled. This is not just about short-term savings, this is about getting consultants where they want them in future: cheaper, more acquiescent and clinically-focused.
Consultants have a contract which is fair - it rewards appropriately but not excessively. If foundation trusts want to change it, they should be forced towards national re-negotiation not local tinkering.
If piecemeal compromises start to happen locally - however the trust justifies them - all consultants will suffer eventually when inferior terms and conditions become common and ‘acceptable’. At that stage, they might not even ‘need’ the sub-consultant grade anymore.
The consultant body, and its representatives, have to show a united front and see off this very real threat.
I shouldn’t be surprised, but somehow I still am. I hope my BMA membership is going to be put to good use in resisting some of this stuff.
I guess it was always inevitable once foundation trusts were given free reign. Inevitable, but no less depressing.
This is divide and conquer time for employers. Unless we stand together, we fall. So get some fire in your bellies and ensure we stick together nationally. And what are our “national” bodies and Colleges doing about this anyway..?
I sincerely wish the national bodies and the BMA are going to defend us on this issue? To those that are hell bent on changing our contract I say: “You are now overstepping the mark” and to my colleagues I say: “I hope we are unified on this development?”
One thing is certain, if the INDIVIDUAL consultants are not prepared to stand firm, together - and be prepared to take some form of action, if necessary - then neither the BMA nor the HCSA will be able to do anything on your behalf! No representative body can do anything for its members unless they have the support of their members. In the past, too many doctors (consultatnts and others) have ‘backed down’ when it came to the crunch.
In the days of ‘The Battle of Barbara Castle’ (back in the ’70s) the whole profession was united and sent in undated resignations; result, the government backed down. They realised they could not take on the whole profession ‘head on’. Since then, successive governments have had a (very successful but unwritten) policy of ‘divive and rule’. This is what is happening again. They are trying to ‘pick off’ consultantys one at a time - with their SPAs, their (possible) CEAs, and the newly-appointed consultants with a ‘new’ (but disadvantageous) contract.
It is imperative that ALL consultants (but particularly the more senior ones) must be prepared to act now - to protect the consultants of the future and proper standards of specialist care for patients.
Retired Orthopod. Swindon