Junior doctors in England take more strike action

LONDON — Hospital doctors in England began another five-day strike on Saturday as a protracted pay battle with the government rumbled on with few signs of a break in the deadlock.

Junior doctors, those below specialist, consultant level, started joining picket lines from 7 am, as part of a walkout that will last until the end of Wednesday.

It followed nearly a dozen strikes over the past year, which included the longest walkout, totaling six days, in the 70 years of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service.

The UK has been hit by walkouts across various sectors over the past two years, as decades-high inflation last year and a cost-of-living crisis led staff members to demand pay rises to keep up with spiraling prices.

The British Medical Association has been asking for 35 percent “pay restoration” for junior doctors, but insists it is willing to negotiate.

The UK government has said the demands are unaffordable amid stretched public finances.

On Saturday the Health Secretary Victoria Atkins accused the British Medical Association committee representing junior doctors of refusing to put her latest offer to its members.

She insisted the government was “prepared to go further than the pay increase of up to 10.3 percent that they have already received” and called for more talks.

However, the association’s junior doctors committee co-chairmen Robert Laurenson and Vivek Trivedi said they needed “a credible pay offer” that would “begin reversing the pay cuts they have inflicted upon us for more than a decade”.