Junior Physicians in England to Begin Five-Day Walkout in November
Doctors in the UK are set to stage a five-day strike in November, in protest over jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that junior physicians will walk out for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who constitute nearly 50% of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are proceeding with the strike after unsuccessful talks with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have been negotiating for the past week with officials, pressing the health minister to resolve the scandal of doctors going unemployed.”
“Our survey reveals 50% of second-year physicians in England are struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals remain vacant. This cannot continue.”
He continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the health secretary to understand that a agreement including options to slowly restore the cuts to pay over a number of years, giving newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”
“We hoped the authorities would recognize that our demands are not just fair but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help prevent our physicians leaving the NHS.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
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 primary care.
More details will follow shortly.
