LONDON – Thousands of doctors in England are carrying out their 11th walkout on Thursday in a long-running dispute with the government over pay and working conditions, halting hospital services just days before the UK general elections.
The five-day strike by junior doctors – those in the early years of their careers – draws attention to the problems plaguing the chronically underfunded National Health Service, Britain’s state-funded public health system, an issue that is one of the main concerns of voters. to the polls on July 4th.
Junior doctors, who form the backbone of hospital and clinical care, have been involved in the pay dispute with the government since the end of 2022. They went on strike for six days in January – the longest in NHS history – and hospitals had to cancel tens of thousands of appointments and operations.
The latest strike begins Thursday and ends Tuesday, just two days before voters vote to choose a new House of Commons.
The British Medical Association, the doctors’ union, says their salaries have fallen by a quarter in the last 15 years and has called for a 35% pay rise. The union says newly qualified doctors earn around £15 ($19) an hour – the minimum wage in the UK is just over £10 an hour – although wages rise quickly after the first year.
Dr Sumi Manirajan, vice-chairman of the union’s junior doctors’ committee, said years of underinvestment had resulted in young doctors leaving en masse for countries offering better salaries, with those left behind seriously overworked and underpaid.
“The doctors I trained with in London, some of the best in the country, left for New Zealand. And actually what this makes me wonder is why am I not doing the same? I want to be valued for the work I do,” she said.
Manirajan, who recently graduated and works in obstetrics and gynecology, added that she sees many women waiting more than a year for routine procedures.
“These patients are in pain and it pains us to see these patients coming in again and again with the same problem that we know we could treat if we had enough doctors,” she said.
The Conservative government says it gave doctors pay rises of between 8.1% and 10.3% last year and says it was a generous deal. It stated that authorities cannot make a wage offer during the pre-election period, but the union refused to call off the strikes.
Manirajan said it was regrettable that the government chose to call elections knowing that the dispute was not resolved.
The doctors’ union said it was ready to talk and has already had some discussions with the opposition Labor Party, which has a considerable lead in the polls.
“It is difficult to understand how the Conservative Party or the Labor Party can deliver on their manifesto commitment to turn around the performance of the NHS in the next Parliament without first ending the dispute,” said Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at think tank The King’s Fund.
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