British doctors hold their longest-ever strike.
British doctors have announced plans to stage their longest-ever strike following the breakdown of talks between their union and the government over working conditions and pay.
Doctors covered by the British Medical Association (BMA) union announced the longest medical strike in the history of the British National Health Service (NHS) after the union’s negotiations with the London government over salary increases and improved working conditions failed. Doctors fail.
According to the Press Association news agency, representatives of this union held five weeks of negotiations with the London government to find a solution to the dispute over doctors’ salaries.
The British Medical Association later announced that the Department of Health and Social Care had failed to come up with a suitable proposal to end the protesting doctors’ strikes.
The General Practitioners Committee of the British Medical Association then unanimously approved the plan to hold strikes in December and January.
According to this plan, these doctors will go on strike from seven in the morning on December 20 to seven in the morning on December 23 and also from seven in the morning on January 3, 2024 to January 9 They will play nationwide in England.
The union announced that the strike, which will be implemented for six full days in January, will mark the longest period of strike by doctors in the history of the National Health Service.
“Victoria” Atkins, the Minister of Health and Social Care of England, said in response to this statement, that the London government will “immediately return to the negotiating table” if these doctors cancel their strike.
He warned that the doctors’ strike would put additional pressure on the NHS during the busy winter season and “put patients’ safety at risk”.
British hospital chiefs have warned that the collapse of talks between protesting doctors and the government is the outcome they feared, warning that the strikes will undermine “efforts to reduce patient waiting lists”, which have been announced as one of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s priorities.
The government in London offered the protesting doctors a three percent salary increase, on top of the average increase of 8.8 percent it previously offered them in the summer season.
However, the British Medical Association said that this plan and the method of paying salaries to doctors of different grades are unfair and ineffective and objected to it.
Another British medical union known as the “Association of Hospital Specialists and Consultants” also announced that general practitioners affiliated with this union will join the 72-hour strike that will begin on December 20.