Junior Doctors in England to Launch Five-Day Strike Next Month
Medical professionals in England are set to stage a five-day strike in November, in protest over pay and employment.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that resident doctors will strike for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who constitute nearly 50% of all doctors in the National Health Service, are proceeding with the strike after failed negotiations with the government.
Causes of the Walkout
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee stated, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have spent the last week in talks with government, urging the health minister to resolve the crisis of doctors going unemployed.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are facing unemployment, their talents being unused whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts remain vacant. This cannot continue.”
He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the minister to see that a deal including options to slowly restore the cuts to pay over several years, providing newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”
“We trusted the authorities would see that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the interest of the public and our those we treat and would also help stop our doctors leaving the NHS.”
About Resident Doctors
Resident doctors have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in general practice.
Further information will follow soon.
