Resident doctors in the United Kingdom have initiated a strike after negotiations with the Labour government regarding a new pay increase failed.
Doctors picketed outside hospitals following the breakdown of talks on Thursday, with the action intended to last for five days until Wednesday 30 July.
Prime Minister Starmer appealed to the striking doctors on Friday, warning that patients’ safety was at risk and that the strikes would “cause real damage.”
“The route the BMA resident doctors committee have chosen will mean everyone loses. My appeal to resident doctors is this: do not follow the BMA leadership down this damaging road. Our NHS and your patients need you,” he wrote in the Times. “Most people do not support these strikes. They know they will cause real damage,” he said.
This industrial action comes despite junior doctors having accepted a 22.3 percent pay rise over two years in September, shortly after Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour party took office.
Junior doctors, those below consultant level, stated they felt compelled to strike again to counter “pay erosion” since 2008.
However, junior doctors maintain that their real-term pay has declined by over 21 percent in the last two decades. Melissa Ryan and Ross Nieuwoudt, co-chairs of the BMA’s resident doctors committee, questioned, “We’re not working 21 per cent less hard so why should our pay suffer?”
Last year’s doctors’ strikes, which led to the cancellation of tens of thousands of appointments and delayed treatments, were part of a series of public and private sector walkouts driven by disputes over pay and working conditions amid soaring inflation.
Health Minister Wes Streeting also appealed to the doctors to reconsider their position, stating in a letter published in The Telegraph that the government “cannot afford to go further on pay this year.”
The previous Conservative government had resisted the BMA’s demand for a 35 percent “pay restoration” to account for real-term inflation over the past decade. Last year, the Labour party aimed to resolve several disputes by offering pay deals to public sector workers, including teachers and train drivers, which included a 15 percent pay deal over three years for train drivers that drew criticism from the Conservative opposition.
