Doctors In England To Embark On A Five-Day Strike
Junior doctors in England have announced that they will embark on a five-day strike next month in a dramatic escalation of their dispute with the Government over pay and staffing.
Members of the British Medical Association (BMA) will walk out from July 13 to 18 in what the association said is thought to be the longest single period of industrial action in the history of the health service.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said the new strike was “extremely disappointing”.
“It puts patient safety and our efforts to cut waiting lists at risk,” he told reporters, insisting the government’s offer was “fair and reasonable”.
But medics say they have seen a 26-percent pay cut in real terms in the last 15 years, as salaries have failed to keep pace with inflation.
They want pay restored to 2008-2009 levels but the government says this would mean an average pay award of about 35 percent this year and is too costly.
Robert Laurenson and Vivek Trivedi, who jointly chair the BMA junior doctors committee, disclosed that the government seemed intent on letting the NHS “decline to the point of collapse”.
They highlighted a BMA survey that said more than half (53 percent) of the nearly 2,000 junior doctors who responded had received offers to move abroad in the past four months.
The government of South Australia state had even paid for advertising trucks to be sent to picket lines offering better pay if doctors emigrated, they claimed.
Laurenson and Trivedi said the government was refusing to reopen talks on pay, forcing them to stage “the longest single walkout by doctors in the NHS’s history”.
The strike could be averted if the government comes up with a “credible offer” on pay restoration, they added.
A series of strikes by doctors, nurses, and other medical staff over below-inflation pay rises and conditions have hit patient care, forcing the cancellation or rescheduling of appointments.
Health officials say it has disrupted services, just as the service battles to clear a huge backlog in treatment caused by years of under-funding and under-staffing, and by the Covid pandemic.
The NHS marks its 75th anniversary on July 5. Funded by general taxation, it was set up in 1948 to provide free health care “from the cradle to the grave”.
