Junior Doctors in England to Stage Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month
Doctors in England are preparing to stage a five-day strike in November, in protest over jobs and pay.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that resident doctors will strike for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who make up about half of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are taking this action after unsuccessful talks 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, pressing the health minister to resolve the crisis of doctors going unemployed.”
“Our survey reveals half of second-year doctors in England are struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste whilst countless individuals wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts remain vacant. This cannot continue.”
He added, “We negotiated sincerely, hoping the health secretary to understand that a deal offering solutions to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over several years, giving recent graduates 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 interest of the community and our those we treat and would also help stop our physicians departing from the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, based on their field, or up to three years in general practice.
More details will follow shortly.
