Junior Doctors in the UK to Launch Five-Day Strike in November
Medical professionals in England are set to begin a five-day strike next month, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that junior physicians will strike for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November.
Junior physicians, who constitute nearly 50% of all doctors in the NHS, are proceeding with the strike after failed negotiations with the government.
Causes of the Walkout
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, urging the health minister to resolve the scandal of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts go unfilled. This cannot continue.”
He continued, “We negotiated sincerely, keen for the minister to see that a deal offering solutions to gradually reverse the pay reductions over several years, giving recent graduates a raise of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We trusted the government would recognize that our demands are not just fair but are in the best interests of the public and our those we treat and would also help stop our doctors departing from the NHS.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Junior physicians have as much as eight years of experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.
More details will follow shortly.
