JUNIOR DOCTORS PLOTTING FIVE-DAY STRIKES
They want to stage walkouts EVERY month till end of year
JUNIOR doctors are plotting week- long strikes every month for the rest of the year. They would walk out from 8am to 5pm for five straight days, according to leaked papers.
The first strike could start on September 12 – causing unprecedented havoc and the loss of thousands of scheduled operations.
Since January junior doctors have been locked in a bitter row with ministers over a new contract that will see them paid less for weekend work.
The five strikes they have staged so far were limited to 24 or 48 hours and week-long walkouts would be much more disruptive. Hospitals will be overstretched in the run-up to winter and the strikers might forfeit any remaining public sympathy.
Drawn up by the British Medical Association’s committee of junior doctors, the plan will be put to a vote of senior officials today.
The leaked papers reveal the committee wants a ‘ rolling programme of escalated action’ this autumn. Junior doctors would
JUNIOR doctors have acknowledged they are losing the public’s support with strike action. Their BMA committee believes the public mood is shifting toward the idea that the strikes are solely about pay.
A leaked document has shown that the doctors are aware they are no longer convincing the public that the proposed industrial action is related to working conditions.
According to the memo, the doctors cannot take for granted ‘that public support will remain in favour of junior doctors in the event of further industrial action’. It warns that support for Jeremy Hunt and the Department of Health is increasing as doctors on the picket line lose favour.
It also acknowledges that messages leaked from a WhatsApp group that revealed that union figures were motivated mainly by pay have ‘undoubtable weakened the BMA’s position in the dispute’.
Concerns were also expressed that more leaked messages may be released.
The report said: ‘While polls overall have shown that public support has remained stronger for junior doctors than for the Government so far, this has weakened throughout the course of the dispute.
‘Ipsos Mori shows the number of people holding the Government to be at fault to have fallen from 6 per cent to 5 per cent between February and April. Over the same period, those believing both sides to be at fault has risen from 18 per cent to 35 per cent. It cannot, therefore, be taken for granted that public support will remain in favour of junior doctors in the event of further industrial action and the inevitable disruption to the public.’
In May a series of leaked WhatsApp group messages showed senior figures at the BMA committee of junior doctors admitting that their grievances over pay was ‘the only real red line’.
The correspondence, which took place over the course of six months, disclosed that the doctors were plotting secret tac- tics at odds with the messages they were putting out to the public. They revealed that although the union publicly claimed that it wanted to enter into talks with the Government, delaying moves and a string of strikes could be the ‘best solution’ to the contract dispute.
Yesterday’s report added: ‘The coverage of the leaked discussions of the executive WhatsApp group has undoubtable weakened the BMA’s position in the dispute.
‘It is, for example, increasingly difficult to present the dispute to an increasingly sceptical media as being about anything other than pay. In the absence of a clear message around safety, rather than pay, there will be those who struggle to accept the rationale for the escalation.’