Resident Doctors in England to Launch Five-Day Strike Next Month
Medical professionals in the UK are preparing to begin a five consecutive day strike in November, in protest over jobs and pay.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that resident doctors will walk out for five consecutive days from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who constitute nearly 50% of all doctors in the NHS, are proceeding with the strike after failed negotiations with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee stated, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have been negotiating for the past week with government, urging the health secretary to end the crisis of doctors going unemployed.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in England are facing unemployment, their talents being unused whilst countless individuals endure long waits for care and hospital shifts go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the health secretary to see that a agreement including options to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over several years, providing recent graduates a raise of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We trusted the government would recognize that our asks are not just fair but are in the interest of the public and our those we treat and would also help prevent our physicians departing from the NHS.”
About Resident Doctors
Junior physicians 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 are expected shortly.
