Resident doctors are out on strike again for five days, and need the widest possible support, Counterfire members report from their areas

Newcastle

Resident-doctor BMA members were out in force at Newcastle’s main hospital, the RVI, on Wednesday this week. Responding to Wes Streeting’s disgusting attacks on them, BMA members came out in solidarity with each other and with their union at the start of the five-days strike action across England. They were determined not to be blamed for the crisis the NHS is in. There are frequent reports already this winter of patients waiting hours in corridors, on non-strike days.

Both Streeting and Starmer are intent on discrediting the BMA as a union. Nothing has come out in support of the BMA from the TUC. This needs to change. Trade unions need to rally round the BMA and trade unionists need to get to picket lines, pass messages of support, and get a resident-doctor speaker at union meetings and other political meetings. This is an increasingly political strike.

Doctors qualifying without jobs affects us all as the capacity of the NHS shrinks and the private sector takes on more and more NHS-funded work. The resident doctors are right to try to redress the balance of fifteen-plus years of austerity. They are not the only ones whose pay has shrunk since 2008, by around a quarter in most cases. More unions need to take up the issue of pay restoration with their members, particularly in the NHS.

The TUC conference three months ago passed a motion reaffirming the movement’s priority as welfare and wages, not weapons and war. Supporting the resident doctors would be a good first step in implementing that.

Graham Kirkwood

Brighton 

This morning at the Royal Sussex County Hospital resident doctors, members of Sussex Defend the NHS, and Brighton and Hove residents bravely faced the grim weather and chilling wind in protest against the government’s latest offer to resident doctors, an offer that will do nothing to address the medical jobs crisis: the NHS is facing a significant shortage of resident doctors. The offer will do nothing to stem the exodus of medics from the UK, or to address the real-terms pay cuts. Intense competition for specialty training roles, real-terms pay cuts, and burnout because of heavy workloads are leading many to go abroad to work for better pay and better conditions.

A recent survey by the BMA has shown that more than 50% of resident doctors have had difficulty in paying their bills, nearly 50% have had to borrow money from family and around 80% have had to reduce the amount they spend on food shopping, and have had to cut down the amount of heating they use. Many doctors are thinking of leaving the NHS, or changing their careers, or leaving to work in another country. They were given a below-inflation pay award in 2022, and the level of pay has eroded since 2008-9. In addition, they are working under great stress and deteriorating conditions. They are simply asking for full pay restoration; but the government refuses to listen. The nation’s health and the state of our NHS is not a priority for the Keir Starmer government. The money is not there for our health and a properly funded NHS, whereas when it comes to the military, there is a bottomless bucket for spending huge amounts of money on building up a war machine for killing people.

This offer will not lead to more doctors in in the NHS, including in our A&E departments; the proposed increase of specialty training posts over the next three years, from the 1,000 extra announced in the ten-year health plan to 4,000 includes already locally employed doctors rather than an increase in capacity.  There are also calls from resident doctors to decrease competition for speciality training posts, with many struggling to find roles, even if they have already worked in the NHS.

It is vital that we stand behind  our doctors and all NHS workers and give them all the support we can. Our NHS is in a critical state, starved of proper funding and under threat of privatisation. Our NHS is an institution we cannot afford to lose.

Because of the government’s intransigence and refusal to listen, the BMA’s resident doctors committee has unanimously voted for further strikes in December and January.

Ellen Graubart

St Thomas’s Hospital, London

Following an 83.2% to 16.8% members’ vote with a 65.34% turnout, NHS Resident Doctors have once again taken to the picket line to demand, for the fourteenth time, more permanent jobs and a real pay increase that aligns their remuneration with inflation. 

The doctors voted to strike despite pre-emptive pressure from the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary and the media who labelled them ‘irresponsible’ and accused them of ‘endangering’ the NHS at its most vulnerable moment. 

These claims are categorically rejected by the BMA and the resident doctors who say that certain provisions are in place to deal with emergencies in the hospitals and that decisions to go on strike are not taken lightly.

The Health Secretary’s latest offer, described as a ‘fumble’ by the BMA, failed to include new jobs or any restoration of pay for the thousands of junior doctors who are being driven away from the NHS despite the growing demand for their skills and services within the NHS. That is the reason the strikes continue.

Despite the cold weather, the turnout on the picket outside St Thomas’s Hospital was as well attended as the thirteenth strike, demonstrating the determination of the resident doctors to continue their long-standing struggle for fair pay and NHS job opportunities in the face of major NHS staff cuts to come.

Neil Harris