Staff Writer
The government claimed that hospital doctors’ strike for a 35 percent wage hike served “only to harm patients” as they began their latest protest in England on Friday.
Health officials estimate that the recurrent industrial action cost the publicly funded health care £1 billion ($1.2 billion), which is why there was a four-day strike.
The British Medical Association (BMA), which represents young doctors, claims that over the past 15 years, their take-home pay has decreased by 26%.
The government’s six percent salary offer plus a one-time payment of £1,250 was rejected by physicians, and health secretary Steve Barclay has made his sharpest condemnation to date of them.
He charged the BMA with “acting recklessly” in an article for the Daily Mail.
According to him, the strike “only hurt patients and increased pressure on their own colleagues.”
However, doctors on the picket line outside University College Hospital in central London said they had no choice but to strike in order to restore salary levels and prevent physicians from leaving the National Health Service (NHS), which is sponsored by the government.
Full pay restoration must take place; that isn’t negotiable. What is negotiable, according to doctor and co-chair of the BMA’s junior doctors committee Robert Laurenson, is how it will be structured and how long it will take.
This is primarily about salary because we are aware that many of our coworkers depart to work in other nations and industries because their income is too low to support them.
About half of the doctors in UK hospitals are junior doctors, who are medical professionals who are not senior specialists but may nonetheless have years of experience.
The current strike is their fifth round of labor unrest.
“Doctors are exerting great effort to reduce waiting queues. The government is the one that won’t sit down at the table, said junior doctor Sumi Manirajan, the committee’s vice chair.
“We are chronically understaffed, and everyone is at breaking point,” he continued.
“£1 billion strike cost”
Due of the significant pandemic backlog, the NHS is struggling with record-breaking patient wait times.
According to data released by the NHS on Thursday, a record 7.6 million individuals in England were waiting to begin normal hospital treatment in June.
The series of junior doctor strikes, according to Julian Hartley, CEO of NHS Providers, cost the NHS £1 billion ($1.2 billion).
According to him, hospitals had to “pay premium rates to consultants” to fill in for the doctors.
In recent months, nurses, ambulance drivers, and other medical professionals have all joined picket lines, increasing pressure on the NHS.
Due to the biggest cost-of-living crisis in a generation, other workers from all sectors of the economy have also taken to the streets in recent months to seek salary increases.
Nearly 778,000 medical appointments in England’s health system have been rescheduled as a result of strike activity since December, according to NHS statistics.
No one gains from this interruption, as we’ve seen time and time again, according to Barclay, who also noted that the compensation offer was “more generous” than that of other public sector employees.
The government has encouraged the BMA to abandon its wage demand “immediately” and stated that its salary offer, which was announced in mid-July, is “final.”
