Thousands of young doctors will go on strike on March 13, in a 72-hour walkout that will further paralyze the NHS.
Union bosses confirmed today that the mass action in England will be a ‘total walkout’ and will include doctors refusing to work in A&E departments.
Young doctors are called the “backbone of the NHS” because of the large amount of daily work they do in the health service, freeing up experienced doctors to deal with specific specialist patients or more complex cases.
Thus, health leaders fear the strike could be the most damaging yet and lead to the cancellation of 100,000 more NHS operations.
Announcing the dates of the strike, the co-chairs of the British Medical Association (BMA) young doctors committee, Dr Rob Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi, said the public should blame the government for the industrial action.
The young doctors last picketed in 2016, as part of a contract dispute between the doctors and then-health secretary Jeremy Hunt.
The British Medical Association has announced a 72-hour strike in March
‘Make no mistake, this strike was absolutely a government gift to avoid; they know it, we know it and our patients need to know it too,’ they said.
‘We have tried, since last summer, to get every Secretary of Health that we have had to sit at the negotiating table.
“We have written many times and even yesterday we were hopeful that Steve Barclay would recognize the need to meet with us to find a viable solution that could have prevented this strike.”
It follows a 98 per cent vote in favor of the pay strike among BMA junior medical members, who can earn up to £58,000 a year.
BMA officials pointed to the government’s recent decision to open wage negotiations with the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), but not with other health unions, as a factor that led them to announce the dates of the strike.
“They have not told us why they have not offered us intensive negotiations or what we should do to get the government to start negotiations with us,” they said.
‘How, in good conscience, can the Secretary of Health continue to stick his head in the sand and hope that by not meeting with us, this crisis created by his Government will somehow just go away?
“He won’t, and patients and the public will continue to feel the brunt of his inaction, until he starts negotiating with us and we come to an agreement that truly values young doctors and pays us what we’re worth.”
The BMA has campaigned for young doctors to not only get a pay rise that stops inflation, but also get ‘pay restoration’ for what they say are years of stagnant pay.
This equates to a colossal 30 per cent increase, a figure ministers have called “unrealistic” and warned will “put patients at risk”.
The BMA announcement brings the total number of NHS strike days in March to six.
This does not include the three-day strike that the RCN suspended since N°10 agreed to negotiate the payments.
NHS ambulance staff are planning strikes on March 6, 8 and 20 with doctors from the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA) who are also on strike in England and have said they will go on strike for the first time ever of the union on March 15.
The announcement of more strikes is another blow to the health service this winter after a wave of strikes by various groups of staff in recent months.
Nearly 140,000 operations and appointments have been canceled due to NHS strikes this winter. That figure includes the largest-ever strike to shake up the ailing health service on February 6, which involved tens of thousands of nurses and paramedics.
Ambulance staff, physiotherapists and nurses have gone on multiple strikes as part of a long-running pay dispute with the government.
The combined strike has led to the NHS hospital cancellation of 140,000 NHS operations and appointments so far.
Health leaders have said a strike by young doctors could be even worse for the NHS than previous strikes, given that young doctors work across a wide range of specialties and services, across the health service, including emergency care. .
Health secretary Steve Barclay previously described the decision by junior doctors to go on strike as “hugely disappointing”.
It added that said junior doctor pay had risen by a ‘cumulative 8.2 per cent’ since 2019/20.
The young doctors last participated in the picket line in 2016.
Ministers at the time had planned to remove overtime rates for junior doctors every day except Sunday, and instead increase the general salary.
But many younger doctors felt the change would result in a net loss.
The dispute resulted in a general strike on January 12, the first industrial action of its kind in 40 years. Strikes were also held on February 10 and March 9-10, 2016.
On April 26 and 27, the junior doctors withdrew from providing routine and emergency care, the first time this had happened.
In total, the strikes led to the cancellation of 100,000 appointments.
The dispute only formally ended in 2019 when junior doctors were offered an 8.2 percent pay raise over four years.
