ER Editor: This is a strike among the UK’s ‘resident’ or junior doctors, who make up around half the hospital workforce and number around 70,000 doctors. The strike runs from yesterday (Friday, Nov. 14) to Wednesday morning.
Sky News has this —
What are doctors striking for?
In brief, it’s about pay rises – the BMA is arguing that resident doctors – previously known as junior doctors – need a 26% pay uplift to restore their earnings, once inflation is taken into account.
However, the BMA chair told Sky News the dispute is rooted deeper in years of pay erosion that have left resident doctors far behind other public sector workers.
Speaking to Sky’s health correspondent Ashish Joshi, Dr Tom Dolphin said: “When we started the dispute… the lowest level of the resident doctors were being paid £14 an hour.
“There were some pay rises over the last couple of years that brought that partly back to the value it should be at, but not all the way.
However,
That comment follows Wednesday’s news that thousands of job cuts at the NHS will go ahead, after £1bn needed to fund the redundancies was approved by the Treasury.
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The Guardian isn’t optimistic about the strike coming to an end Tuesday —
Why the NHS doctors’ strikes look set to continue
The BMA and Wes Streeting are poles apart, with the union committed to full pay restoration and the health secretary adamant there is no money for that
…
It is now one of the longest-running disputes in NHS history. The UK is on its fourth prime minister since the BMA decided at its annual conference in June 2022 that resident – at the time still called junior – doctors in England deserved “full pay restoration”.
Boris Johnson fell a month later. Since then, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and now Keir Starmer have grappled with the union’s demand, which seeks to return resident doctors’ pay to the level it was at in 2008, before austerity-era low annual rises and inflation eroded the real-terms value of their salaries. There are 70,000 such medics, who range from the newly qualified to those about to become consultants, of whom 60,000 are in the BMA.
The union initially sought a 35% hike to resident doctors’ salaries. Before this latest stoppage they had struck 12 times, 11 of them under the Conservatives. That has led to about 1.5m outpatient appointments and surgeries being rescheduled.
Their campaign has borne fruit. Pay has risen 28.9% over the past three years, including by 22% under Labour. But stubbornly high inflation means that a further 26% uplift is still needed to achieve full pay restoration, the union says. This 13th strike will continue until 7am next Wednesday.
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UK Doctors Launch Five-Day Strike as Pay Row Escalates
The Labour government accuses union leaders of political grandstanding
TEC NEWS / AFP
Thousands of UK doctors in England launched a five-day strike over pay and training posts, the 13th walkout by medics since March 2023.
The strike by some resident doctors, those below consultant level who make up half the medical workforce of hospitals, was condemned by the Labour government’s health minister. Wes Streeting said the leadership of the doctors’ union, the British Medical Association (BMA), was “choosing confrontation over care”.
CARLOS JASSO / AFP
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“This strike isn’t about fairness anymore. It’s about political posturing,” he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. “We cannot and will not move on pay, especially not after a 28.9% pay rise over the last three years and the highest pay award across the entire public sector in the last two,” he added.
The BMA argues that doctors still need a 26% pay hike to restore their earnings to the real value they had two decades ago.
The union is also demanding an increase in training posts. Doctors have complained that in some cases, more than 30,000 doctors are applying for only 10,000 training places that will allow them to progress in their careers towards becoming consultants. The situation is leaving many doctors without a permanent job after years of training.
The UK remains in the grip of a prolonged cost-of-living crisis that has sparked strikes across the economy. Groups including teachers, nurses, ambulance workers, lawyers, train workers, and border staff have all walked out over the past three-and-a-half years.
Source
Featured image source: https://apnews.com/article/uk-england-junior-doctors-strike-95045ba4f4dd7dd0332eb1a268fccfc8
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Published to The Liberty Beacon from EuropeReloaded.com
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Remember about 10+ years ago when the MD’s in Israel and then in Los Angeles went on strike? The death rate dropped. Imagine that.