Junior doctors’ ballot could lead to a 72-hour pay strike, says BMA| NHS

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Junior doctors in England will start a 72-hour strike in March to protest their pay if their imminent ballot yields a majority for the strike.

Their union, the British Medical Association (BMA), issued the warning as it claimed junior doctors had suffered an “staggering and unjustified” 26.1% drop in their income since 2008.

The union will start voting on more than 45,000 junior doctors from Monday in a move that could escalate a growing wave of strikes by NHS staff over their pay.

Nurses are scheduled to start their third stop on January 18 and 19, while ambulance staff are scheduled to turn down their second and third stops on January 11 and 23.

The BMA has made it clear that if junior doctors vote to strike, which seems likely, they will withdraw their employment from all NHS services, including emergency care, for three days. Polls will run for six weeks, through February 20.

Any downtime could lead to major disruption to hospitals and other services, including surgery and outpatient appointments. NHS trusts will have to scale back the services they can provide as senior doctors are redeployed from their regular duties to cover junior colleagues.

Junior physicians are physicians in training who have not yet obtained consultant status. However, despite their title, they include physicians ranging from those who have just qualified to those in their mid-to-late 30s who already have significant experience, such as those registered.

Hospital chiefs expressed deep concern about the potential impact of the three-day stoppage.

Miriam Deakin, director of policy for the Hospital Authority’s NHS Providers, said the BMA announcement was “extremely concerning”. If the ballot results in a strike action, “the trust leaders will do everything they can to minimize disruption and prioritize the safe delivery of care and services to patients.”

She added: “The leaders of the trust are very concerned about the possibility of a prolonged or coordinated strike by health unions in the coming months. They also understand the factors that prompted junior doctors and other healthcare workers to vote to strike.”

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the 72-hour outing of junior doctors “would be a huge concern for health leaders”.

He and Deakin urged ministers to start talks with health unions over wages, which Health Secretary Steve Barclay had consistently refused to do. Unions have refused to give Barclay a £1,400 pay rise for the year and want one more closely proportional to inflation, to avoid staff suffering real depreciation.

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“Faced with mounting winter pressures, a huge vacancy gap and strikes coming in January which are set to affect services, government cannot sit back and let more strikes happen when patient care is at stake and unions must be open to compromise. “.

Junior doctors are not included in the staff covered by this year’s salary round because they are in the final year of a four-year deal agreed in 2019 that gave them a 2% raise for 2022-23.

However, the BMA pointed to the fact that the Doctors and Dentists Pay Review Authority, which advises ministers on salaries for those professions, said 2% was “likely not enough” to help the NHS improve retention of junior staff. Doctors and their productivity and also that the “improvement” clause in the 2% plan allows ministers to improve this figure if circumstances change.

The Department of Health and Social Care said: “A multi-year wage deal with the British Medical Association increases junior doctors’ salaries by a cumulative 8.2% by 2023. We have also invested an additional £90m to provide more experienced junior doctors with increased pay, and increased allowances for those who work Frequently on weekends, increased rates of pay for night shifts.

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