Junior doctors in England will strike for three days in a row from Monday, in the biggest disruption to the NHS and patients since a wave of industrial action by health workers began in December.
Unlike nurses and ambulance workers, who maintain emergency and other critical cover on the go, junior doctors do not agree to similar arrangements, so hospital heads struggle to maintain services.
This week has seen a series of strikes by workers seeking higher pay amid the cost of living crisis, including teachers across the UK and more than 100,000 civil servants who will walk out on Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Budget day.
Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents senior health managers in England, said the industrial action by junior doctors was “a different order of magnitude” from other strikes the service has suffered since December.
He added this was partly due to the duration but also the absence of so-called derogations, meaning critical services had to be covered by consultants and other NHS staff.
Hartley said that non-urgent care for patients would be significantly reduced and warned of “the potential for some risk for important cases to be delayed if consultants are not available because they are covering for junior doctors”.
The British Medical Association, the union representing junior doctors, said there were “unpredictable mass casualty events or large-scale incidents, which are unrelated to the provision of NHS services and cannot be accommodated within existing resources”, it has agreed with NHS England the process by which members can be asked to return to work.
In the ballot of junior doctors by the BMA last month, in which more than three quarters participated, 98 percent voted to strike in pursuit of a 35 percent salary increase.
The BMA says pay has been cut by more than a quarter since 2008 even as workloads and waiting lists are at record highs.
On Sunday, the BMA launched an advertising campaign, saying that sandwich chain Pret A Manger had announced it would pay staff up to £14.10 an hour while junior doctors make £14.09. “Thanks to this government you can make more coffee than save patients,” says the BMA ad.
Junior doctors who are members of the Association of Hospital Consultants and Specialists, a smaller union, will also strike between Monday and Wednesday.
On Saturday, BMA leaders rejected an eleventh-hour offer from health secretary Steve Barclay to engage in “formal pay talks on the same basis as other health unions, including refusing to strike next week”.
Dr Vivek Trivedi and Dr Robert Laurenson, chair of the BMA’s UK junior doctors committee, said: “Until we have a credible [pay] offer, we are not in a position to refuse.
The Royal College of Nursing, Unison, GMB and Unite are in talks with ministers over pay rises and have suspended strike action in the meantime.
Rishi Sunak said: “It is very disappointing that the junior doctors’ union is not on board with the government.
“We are actually having a constructive dialogue with the other unions that have accepted the offer to come in and talk. . . . I am asking the junior doctors to follow suit.”
Barclay said he wanted to find “justice [pay] a settlement that recognizes the important role of junior doctors and the wider economic pressures the UK faces”.
Meanwhile teachers across England will strike on Wednesday and Thursday, with the Department for Education under increasing pressure to increase pay offers to members of the National Education Union for 2022-23.
Strikes organized by trade unions in Scotland and Wales were largely suspended after the Scottish and Welsh governments increased pay offers. More than 100,000 civil servants represented by the PCS union will walk out on Wednesday, Budget day, to demand higher pay.
On the railways, meanwhile, there was fresh disruption on Thursday and Saturday, when members of the RMT union walked out on 14 train operators.
The strike has gone ahead despite a breakthrough in the RMT’s separate dispute with infrastructure owner Network Rail. RMT members vote on whether to accept better pay offers from Network Rail.