Thousands of UK doctors in England on Friday launched a five-day strike over pay and training posts, the 13th walkout by medics since March 2023.
The strike from 0700 GMT by some resident doctors, those below consultant level who make up half the medical workforce of hospitals, was condemned by the Labour government’s health minister.
Wes Streeting said the leadership of the doctors’ union, the British Medical Association (BMA), was “choosing confrontation over care”.
“This strike isn’t about fairness anymore. It’s about political posturing,” he wrote in the Daily Telegraph.
“We cannot and will not move on pay, especially not after a 28.9 per cent pay rise over the last three years and the highest pay award across the entire public sector in the last two,” he added.
The BMA argues that doctors still need a 26 percent pay hike to restore their earnings to the real value they had two decades ago.
The union is also demanding an increase in training posts.
Doctors have complained that in some cases more than 30,000 doctors are applying for only 10,000 training places that will allow them to progress in their careers towards becoming a consultant.
The situation is leaving many doctors without a permanent job after years of training.
The UK remains in the grip of a prolonged cost of living crisis that has sparked strikes across the economy.
Groups including teachers, nurses, ambulance workers, lawyers, train workers and border staff have all walked out over the past three-and-a-half years.
In July, thousands of UK doctors launched a five-day strike after talks with the Labour government for a new pay increase failed to reach a deal.
Doctors were out on picket lines outside hospitals after negotiations with the government went down the wire late Thursday, without reaching an accord.
The move comes after the doctors accepted a pay rise offer totalling 22.3 percent over two years in September, soon after Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour party took power.
Resident doctors, those below consultant level, have said they felt they had “no choice” but to strike again to reverse “pay erosion” since 2008.
Starmer on Friday appealed to the doctors, saying patients were being put at risk and the strikes would “cause real damage”.
Launching a strike “will mean everyone loses,” Starmer wrote in the Times, highlighting the added strain it would put on the already struggling National Health Service (NHS).
He appealed to the doctors not to “follow” their union, the British Medical Association (BMA) “down this damaging road. Our NHS and your patients need you” .
“Lives will be blighted by this decision,” Starmer warned.
But the junior doctors have said their pay in real terms has eroded more than 21 percent over the past two decades.
“We’re not working 21 percent less hard so why should our pay suffer?” said the co-chairs of the BMA’s resident doctors committee, Melissa Ryan and Ross Nieuwoudt in a statement.
Last year’s doctors’ strikes, which saw tens of thousands of appointments cancelled and treatment delayed, were among a series of public and private sector walk-outs over pay and conditions as inflation soared.
Health minister Wes Streeting also appealed to doctors to reverse their position, saying in a letter published in The Telegraph that the government “cannot afford to go further on pay this year”.
The previous Conservative government last year resisted the BMA’s demands for a 35-percent “pay restoration” to reflect real-term inflation over the last decade.
Last year, Labour moved to draw a line under a series of disputes reaching 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.
