Thousands of doctors go on strike in England a week before the UK general election
Thousands of doctors in England are staging their 11th walkout in a long-running dispute with the government over pay and working conditions
LONDON — Thousands of doctors in England are staging their 11th walkout on Thursday in a long-running dispute with the government over pay and working conditions, disrupting hospital services just days before the U.K. general election.
The five-day strike by junior doctors — those in the early years of their careers — shines a spotlight on the troubles besetting the chronically underfunded National Health Service, Britain’s state-run public health system, a topic that is a top concern for voters going to the polls on July 4.
Junior doctors, who form the backbone of hospital and clinic care, have been locked in the pay dispute with the government since late 2022. They went on strike for six days in January — the longest in NHS history — and hospitals had to cancel tens of thousands of appointments and operations.
The latest strike began Thursday and ends on Tuesday, just two days before voters cast their ballots for a new House of Commons.
The British Medical Association, the doctors' union, says their pay has dropped by a quarter over the last 15 years and has called for a 35% pay raise. The union says newly qualified doctors earn about 15 pounds ($19) an hour — the U.K. minimum wage is just over 10 pounds an hour — though salaries rise rapidly after the first year.
Dr. Sumi Manirajan, deputy chair of the junior doctors committee in the union, said years of underinvestment has resulted in young doctors leaving in droves to countries such as Australia that offer better pay, with those left behind seriously overworked and underpaid.
“Doctors that I trained with in London, some
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