Hospital doctors in England will today begin an industrial action over stoppage of their salaries and irregular staffing despite rise in inflation.
The unprecedented five-day stoppage over pay and staffing is the latest in eight months of industrial action across the National Health Service (NHS), which is already reeling from a vast pandemic backlog.
The industrial action by junior doctors — those below consultant level — is due to begin at 7:00 am (0600 GMT) and last until 7:00 am on Tuesday.
Senior hospital doctors, known as consultants, in England, will also begin a 48-hour strike on July 20, with radiographers following suit from July 25.
The British Medical Association’s (BMA) Junior Doctors Committee says medics have effectively had a 26 percent pay cut in real terms in the last 15 years, as salaries have failed to keep pace with soaring inflation.
The government claims that backdating their pay to reflect inflation since 2008 is too costly and has instead offered an extra five percent, as it battles to reduce inflation.
BMA leaders Robert Laurenson and Vivek Trivedi said: “Today marks the start of the longest single walkout by doctors in the NHS’s history, but this is still not a record that needs to go into the history books,”
Meanwhile, the duo stated that the strike action can be called off if their demands are met but expressed dissatisfaction over government nonchalant attitude to their request.
“We can call this strike off today if the UK government will simply follow the example of the government in Scotland and drop their nonsensical precondition of not talking whilst strikes are announced and produce an offer which is credible to the doctors they are speaking with.
“The complete inflexibility we see from the UK government today is baffling, frustrating, and ultimately destructive for everyone who wants waiting lists to go down and NHS staffing numbers to go up,” Laurenson and Trivedi added.
