- Thousands of doctors in England are set to stage their 11th walkout on Thursday due to a dispute over pay and working conditions.
- The strike is set to disrupt hospital services just days before the UK general election.
- The medics’ union is ready to engage in discussions and has already held talks with the opposition Labour Party.
The five-day strike by junior doctors — those in the early years of their careers — highlights the challenges facing the chronically underfunded National Health Service, Britain’s state-funded public health system. This topic is a top concern for voters heading to the polls on July 4.
Junior doctors, who constitute the backbone of hospital and clinic care, have been embroiled in a pay dispute with the government since late 2022. They initiated a six-day strike in January — the longest in NHS history — resulting in hospitals having to cancel tens of thousands of appointments and operations.
The latest strike starts on Thursday and concludes on Tuesday, just two days before voters cast their ballots to elect a new House of Commons.
The British Medical Association, the doctors’ union, asserts that their pay has decreased by a quarter over the last 15 years and has called for a 35 percent pay increase. The union states that newly qualified doctors earn approximately 15 pounds ($19) per hour — slightly above the UK minimum wage of just over 10 pounds per hour — with salaries increasing rapidly after the first year.
Dr. Sumi Manirajan, deputy chair of the junior doctors committee at the union, stated that years of underinvestment have caused young doctors to leave in large numbers for countries offering better pay, leaving those remaining seriously overworked and underpaid.
“Doctors that I trained with in London, some of the best in the country, have left to go to New Zealand. And actually, what it makes me think of is why am I not doing the same? I want to be valued for the work that I do,” she said.
Manirajan, a recent graduate working in obstetrics and gynecology, added that she observes many women waiting for more than a year for routine procedures.
“These patients are in pain, and it hurts us to see us see these patients come in again and again with the same problem that we know we could treat if we had enough doctors,” she said.
The Conservative government stated that it awarded doctors pay raises ranging from 8.1 percent to 10.3 percent last year, describing it as a generous settlement. The government maintained that it could not make a pay offer during the pre-election period, but the union refused to call off the strikes.
Manirajan expressed disappointment that the government decided to call an election despite knowing that the dispute remained unresolved. The medics’ union stated readiness to engage in discussions and has already held some talks with the opposition Labour Party, which holds a considerable lead in polls.
“It is difficult to comprehend how either the Conservative Party or the Labour Party can deliver on their manifesto commitment to recover NHS performance over the next Parliament without first ending the dispute,” said Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at The King’s Fund think tank.
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