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Doctors in the United Kingdom embarked on a five-day strike on Friday after negotiations for a pay increase with the Labour government failed to yield the desired result.
Thousands of doctors were seen on picket lines outside medical facilities following a proposal for a pay raise offer totalling 22.3 per cent over two years in September, after Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour party took the reins.
According to resident doctors, there was no other choice but to strike again so that the “pay erosion” since 2008 would be reversed.
The development comes after Starmer’s appeal to the doctors on Friday, during which he pointed out that patients were at risk because strikes would cause damage.
Writing in the Times, Starmer said embarking on a strike “will mean everyone loses”, adding that the strain would fall on the already struggling National Health Service (NHS).
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The Prime Minister urged the doctors against following their union, the British Medical Association (BMA), “down this damaging road. Our NHS and your patients need you”.
“Lives will be blighted by this decision,” Starmer added.
In their counterargument, Melissa Ryan and Ross Nieuwoudt, the co-chairs of the BMA’s resident doctors committee, queried, “We’re not working 21 per cent less hard, so why should our pay suffer?”
In his appeal, Health Minister Wes Streeting urged the striking doctors to reverse their position, saying in a letter published in The Telegraph that the government “cannot afford to go further on pay this year”.
