TheCable

Thousands of junior doctors under the British Medical Association (BMA) will go on strike for five days over demand for increased salaries.

The strike, which will be the longest in the history of the national health service, will take place from July 13 to July 18.

TheCable had reported that the doctors went on strike from June 14 to June 17 for the same reason.

The junior doctors had also previously gone on strike for 96 hours in April and 72 hours in March.

The union said junior doctors have suffered a “pay erosion” of 26 percent over the last 15 years, as their wages have failed to keep up with inflation.

They are demanding a 35 percent pay rise to reverse this.

Announcing the latest strike in a statement on Friday, Robert Laurenson and Vivek Trivedi, co-chairs of the BMA junior doctors committee, said it has been almost a week since the last round of strikes finished but the association has not heard from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in terms of reopening negotiations.

The association said it was shameful that the government was seemingly content to let the situation decline to the point of collapse.

“With the 75th birthday of the NHS just days away, neglect of its workforce has left us with 7.4m people on waiting lists for surgery and procedures, 8,500 unfilled doctors’ posts in hospitals, and doctors who can barely walk down the road without a foreign government tempting them to leave an NHS where they are paid £14 per hour for a country which will pay them properly,” the statement reads.

“What better indication of how committed they are to ending this dispute could we have? As their refusal to even discuss pay restoration leads to continued disruption to the health service, more than four-fifths of junior doctors report finding their patients supportive – they understand the value of a fully staffed and resourced NHS.

“We are announcing the longest single walkout by doctors in the NHS’s history – but this is not a record that needs to go into the history books.

“Even now the government can avert our action by coming to the table with a credible offer on pay restoration. Restoring pay can stem the flow of Australian job adverts in doctors’ social media feeds – and lead to a future 75 years of doctors being paid fairly, in a rebuilt workforce and NHS that this country can continue to be proud of.”

Meanwhile, the union has threatened that if the government does not improve their offer, junior doctors will strike for a minimum of three days every month over the summer.