Kicking off a strike billed as the most disruptive in the history of the U.K.’s public health service, tens of thousands of doctors walked off the job across England Tuesday.
The four-day walkout will likely cause unprecedented disruption to the state-funded National Health Service (NHS), prompting the government to warn of a risk to patient safety.
Tens of thousands of junior doctors – qualified physicians who make up nearly half of the medical workforce – are striking for pay rises better aligned with inflation in a walkout that follows a three-day doctors’ strike last month.
“This latest round of strikes will see unparalleled levels of disruption, and we are very concerned about the potential severity of impact on patients and services across the country,” NHS England National Medical Director Stephen Powis said.
“We’ve also asked (hospitals) to reschedule procedures and outpatients as quickly as possible, but this will take weeks to recover from,” Powis told BBC Radio, adding that the NHS was working to ensure emergency services were kept intact.
Health service bosses say as many as 350,000 scheduled operations and appointments will be canceled during the walkout. Senior doctors and other medics have had to be drafted to cover emergencies, critical care and maternity services.
The NHS Confederation’s Matthew Taylor told Sky News the strikes “are going to have a catastrophic impact on the capacity of the NHS.”
Powis said the walkout “will be the most disruptive period of strike action that we’ve seen this winter, probably the most disruptive period of action in NHS history.”
The strike is the latest to involve NHS staff, following walkouts by nurses, paramedics, and others demanding rises that better reflect annual inflation running at more than 10%.
It comes as the NHS experiences one of the most severe crises in its 75-year history, overwhelmed with some 7 million patients waiting for hospital treatment, severely affecting areas such as cardiovascular care.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made cutting hospital waiting times one of his major priorities amid eroding public satisfaction with an institution that has long been a source of national pride.
The union representing doctors, the British Medical Association (BMA), wants a 35% pay rise, arguing that members have suffered a 26% real terms cut in pay over 15 years.
The union says newly qualified medics earn just 14.09 pounds ($17) an hour – the U.K. minimum wage is just over 10 pounds an hour – though salaries rise rapidly after the first year.
Dr. Vivek Trivedi, co-chairperson of the union’s junior doctors committee, said the walkout could be stopped if Health Secretary Steve Barclay made a “credible offer” on pay. The government says it is willing to negotiate if the strike is called off but calls the 35% demand unaffordable.
“Not only will the walkouts risk patient safety, but they have also been timed to maximize disruption after the Easter break,” Barclay said.
He says the BMA’s demands are unreasonable and would mean an increase of more than 20,000 pounds ($24,840) for some doctors.
A wave of strikes has disrupted Britons’ lives for months as workers demand pay raises to keep pace with soaring inflation, which stood at 10.4% in February.
Nurses, ambulance crews, teachers, border staff, driving examiners, bus drivers and postal workers have all walked off their jobs to demand higher pay.
Unions say wages, especially in the public sector, have fallen in real terms over the past decade, and a cost-of-living crisis fueled by sharply rising food and energy prices has left many struggling to pay their bills.
Disputes in some sectors have been resolved in recent weeks.
