THE ” junior doctors », doctors with a status close to that of interns in France (residents in Quebec), began nine days of strike on Wednesday in England, planned in two stages, to obtain an increase in salaries which, they say, would help to curb the hemorrhage in the profession.
This new strike, after previous movements in recent months and the failure of negotiations with the government, takes place at a time when the public health system, the NHS, is struggling to absorb the gigantic waiting lists where patients are languishing.
Questioned by AFP on a strike picket, Sumi Manirajan, a 29-year-old doctor and member of the BMA union (British Medical Association) has “plenty of colleagues” who have left the UK for Australia or New Zealand.
“Salaries are low”, “working conditions are bad and we don’t have enough doctors”, he explains, citing the figure of 50,000 doctors missing compared to other European countries.
“There is a massive brain drain” and a “real feeling of abandonment by the country,” explains Joseph Kendall, a psychiatric doctor, “as if our social contract had been torn apart.”
“We need to pay our doctors fairly” to keep them, underlines Lili Hwong, ENT doctor.
A junior doctor earns around 32,000 pounds sterling (37,000 euros) in his first year in office, according to the government.
The walkout began at 7 a.m. (2 a.m. in Quebec), and lasted until 7 a.m. Saturday morning. Doctors will then stop working again for six days from January 3 to 9, in what will be the longest strike in the history of the NHS.
“After five weeks of intense negotiations, the government has not shown itself capable of producing a credible offer on salaries,” explained the BMA (British Medical Association) doctors’ union in early December, in the press release announcing this new movement.
THE junior doctors were offered an increase of 3% in addition to that of 8.8% on average already granted this summer but, according to the BMA union, these proposals still amount to a reduction in purchasing power for many doctors.
“Huge disruption”
This new strike is “very disappointing,” said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Tuesday during a hearing in Parliament, stressing that the junior doctors were now “the only” public officials with whom no salary agreement had been concluded.
He also warned that this strike would worsen the waiting lists suffered by patients.
Stephen Powis, national medical director of NHS England, said: “These walkouts come at a time when they will cause huge disruption to the NHS, whose services are already feeling winter pressure.”
“The worst fear of (hospital) managers has come true” with this strike, lamented Julian Hartley, president of NHS Providers, an organization which brings together hospital centers.
On the eve of the strike, Health Minister Victoria Atkins wanted to reassure, stressing that “significant emergency measures” had been taken to mitigate the disruptions, adding that her door “remains open” to negotiations subject to the stopping the movement.
Suffering from understaffing and long waiting lists, the British health system has been marked in recent months by a series of strikes by various categories of staff, including an unprecedented movement by nurses.
A category of experienced doctors, “consultants”, recently obtained an increase ranging from 6% to 19.6%, on which members of the BMA union have yet to vote.
The United Kingdom has experienced numerous strikes since mid-2022, due to the purchasing power crisis. Long stuck above 10%, inflation, which has been falling recently, stood at 4.6% in October.