LONDON: Hospital doctors in England will walk out for five days later this month, their union said Tuesday, ten months after they settled a long-running wave of strikes.
The move comes after the doctors accepted a pay rise offer totalling 22.3 percent over two years last September, soon after Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s new Labour government took power.
Announcing the fresh industrial action by resident doctors — those below consultant level — the UK doctors’ union, the British Medical Association, said the government had left them “no choice”.
“We met (Health Secretary) Wes Streeting yesterday and made every attempt to avoid strike action by opening negotiations for pay restoration,“ said the BMA’s Melissa Ryan and Ross Nieuwoudt, co-chairs of the resident doctors committee.
“Without a credible offer to keep us on the path to restore our pay, we have no choice but to call strikes,“ they added.
The BMA doctors said the government had refused to negotiate on pay, “wanting to focus on non-pay elements without suggesting what these might be”.
Accepting the government’s pay offer last September, the BMA’s resident doctors’ committee hailed the deal as “the end of 15 years of pay erosion with the beginning of two years of modest above-inflation pay rises”.
But they added: “There is still a long way to go, with doctors remaining 20.8 percent in real terms behind where we were in 2008.”
The doctors’ strikes, which saw appointments cancelled and treatment delayed, were among a series of public and private sector walk-outs over pay and conditions as inflation soared.
The previous Conservative government had resisted the BMA’s demands for a 35-percent “pay restoration” to reflect real-term inflation over the last decade.
But Labour moved quickly to draw a line under the disputes with a series of pay offers to public sector workers including teachers and train drivers.
Those included a 15 percent pay deal over three years for train drivers which was heavily criticised by the Conservative opposition.
The strike is due to take place for five days from 7:00 am (0600 GMT) on July 25. – AFP
