Resident doctors to strike next month over unemployment crisis

The BMA has announced resident doctors in England will go on strike for five days next month over the unemployment crisis.

The strike will run from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November, the union said, after earlier this month first-year doctors overwhelmingly voted to support strike action as a tool to make the Government solve the crisis. 

Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee (RDC), said that the union spent the last week in talks with Government, ‘pressing’ the health secretary to ‘end the scandal of doctors going unemployed’.

However, the Government has failed to offer ‘a credible plan on jobs or pay’ during the talks, according to the BMA.

A survey from the union in July revealed that half (52%) of doctors finishing their foundation training in the summer had no ‘substantive employment or regular locum work’ secured for August. 

And last month, newly-released NHS England statistics revealed competition for GP specialty training posts has reached a record high, with five doctors vying for every available place in England. 

Dr Fletcher said: ‘We know from our own survey half of second year doctors in England are struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment, and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.

‘We talked with the Government in good faith – keen for the health secretary to see that a deal that included options to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over several years, giving newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the next four years.

‘We hoped the Government would see that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help stop our doctors leaving the NHS.’

Following the announcement, health secretary Wes Streeting urged the BMA to call off the strikes and ‘come back to the table’.

He said: ‘It is preposterous that the BMA have rushed headlong into more damaging strike action a week after its new leadership opened discussions with the Government. 

‘After resident doctors have received a 28.9% pay rise, the Government has been clear that we simply cannot go further on pay this year.  

‘But by walking out on strike, the BMA are walking away from an offer to improve resident doctors’ working conditions and create more specialty training roles to progress their careers. The BMA are blocking a better deal for doctors.’

Resident doctors in England, including GP registrars, took industrial action in July over the bid to restore pay to pre-2008 levels, with an additional linked dispute regarding the doctor unemployment crisis launched at the same time.  

Pulse has previously reported on job shortages s as part of a wider investigation into the GP recruitment and unemployment crisis.