Junior doctors in England vote to continue strike until mid-September
Junior doctors in England have opted to stay on strike until mid-September in their long-running pay dispute, triggering a new wave of disruption for the NHS.
Those who are members of the British Medical Association voted overwhelmingly in favor of further strikes in addition to the 41 days of strikes since last March.
They supported another six months of strikes by 98% to 2% on a 62% turnout. There was almost as much support – 97% in favor, and only 3% against – for taking action just before a strike, such as refusing to work overtime, in pursuit of a 35% pay increase.
Their renewed legal mandate means that BMA trainee doctors can take both forms of action from April 3 to September 19, provided they give at least two weeks’ notice to the healthcare institutions and GP practices where they work.
Announcing the vote results, junior doctor leaders reiterated their plea to Health and Human Services Minister Victoria Atkins to make them a “credible” new offer. That seems unlikely, as Atkins has ruled out putting more money on the table.
NHS bosses said appointments and operations for patients would be canceled as a direct result of the next phase of the campaign. The doctors are seeking a 35% pay increase as a “full recovery” from the 26% decline in the real value of their salaries since 2008.
The vote is “another worrying escalation in this long-standing dispute between the government and junior doctors,” said Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of the hospitals group NHS Providers.
Several rounds of talks with ministers and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) officials have failed to bridge the gap between the BMA’s demands and the government’s willingness to provide trainee doctors with sufficient funding to enable them to convince them to call off their strikes.
Dr. Rob Laurenson and Dr. Vivek Trivedi, the co-chairs of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, said it would be cheaper for ministers to settle the dispute than to allow the strikes to continue.
“The government believed it could ignore, delay and offer up the plans for so long that we would simply give up. That attitude has now led to the NHS wasting £3 billion on the strikes. This is more than double the cost of settling our entire claim,” they said.
This is the third time in a row that almost 100% of trainee doctors have voted to strike, despite most losing a day’s wages if they refuse to work.
The DHSC said: “It is disappointing that BMA members have once again voted in favor of industrial action, when we have already given trainee doctors a pay rise of up to 10.3% this financial year and made it clear in previous negotiations that further investment was available.
“Overall NHS waiting lists have fallen for four months in a row, but further strikes will hamper this progress, and more than 1.4 million appointments and operations have now been rescheduled since strike action began.”