The UK faces fresh strikes on Thursday, affecting both hospitals, where thousands of medical workers have stopped work for the first time in a decade, and the railways, where train drivers have once again stopped work.
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The country, which is facing a severe crisis in the cost of living, has been plagued for months by strikes in various sectors: healthcare, transport, education and the postal service… Workers are demanding wage increases as inflation falls however, at 7.9% in June, it remains the highest over a year among the G7 countries.
After the nurses, the paramedics and the ‘junior doctors’, who are equivalent to the interns, it is the turn of the ‘consultants’, the most experienced doctors, this week to stop working in English hospitals. They began a 48-hour strike at 7 a.m. local time (6 a.m. GMT) on Thursday.
Hospital dentists have joined the movement.
The NHS public health service is overwhelmed. After years of austerity and the Covid-19 pandemic, access to health care is becoming increasingly difficult.
Children may have to wait up to 18 months for dental procedures that require anesthesia, including tooth extractions, according to BBC research released on Wednesday.
The five-day strike by “junior doctors” that lasted until last Tuesday resulted in the postponement of more than 100,000 appointments. The NHS warned that the work of specialists could lead to even greater disruption.
More than 600,000 doctor’s appointments have been affected in the eight-month strikes, according to NHS chief medical officer Stephen Powis. “It’s getting harder and harder to get the services up and running again after every strike,” he lamented.
“A Sad Day”
“No strike is a party. It’s a sad day,” said Philip Kelly, a doctor specializing in acute care medicine, from a picket line outside a London hospital. But “at the end of the year we will be earning 40% less in real terms than in 2008,” he lamented.
The government has proposed a 6% increase in salaries for medical specialists this year.
“My door is always open to discuss non-wage issues, but this proposal is final and I therefore call on the BMA (the British Medical Association union) to end their strikes immediately,” Health Secretary Steve Barclay said in a statement.
On July 13, Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called on public sector unions to end the strikes and accept the government’s final wage increase offer of 5% to 7% depending on the industry. Teachers have therefore announced the suspension of their movement after an offer of 6.5%.
Train drivers from the RMT union, who have been stepping up their strikes for a year, also called off their strikes on Thursday, at the start of the school holidays.
Deutsche Bahn warned that there would be “little or no traffic on much of the route network” on Thursday and July 22 and 29. The railway union Aslef had started a strike on July 17, which was due to end on Saturday.
“These attacks are part of a campaign that began more than a year ago,” Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT, told Sky News. They disrupted trains “from the south-west of England to Scotland,” he noted.
“We’re really in trouble. People must have decent wages,” he added.