How much money do junior doctors really earn? If you’ve been listening to the British Medical Association – the trade union which represents junior doctors – this week you will have seen comparisons made between their salaries and the wages of Pret A Manger employees. The union talks about members having to ‘cut back on food and heat to pay bills’. To think of notoriously overworked junior doctors in such circumstances is outrageous. But how typical is that scenario of those demanding a 35 per cent pay rise?
First-year junior doctors are still some of the better-paid workers in Britain, and this is only the jumping-off point
A doctor can be classified as ‘junior’ for years, depending on what type of medicine they practise. Being stuck on a salary of roughly £29,000 per year – the lowest rung on the pay scale – would surely be an injustice, not least because of the unsociable hours and inevitable stress that the job demands.
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