Off the wire
• Rare winter floods cause massive economic losses  • China leading in clean energy investment: EF CEO  • Alibaba launches funds to invest in HK, Taiwan startups  • China busts largest underground banking case  • China, Mali pledge to deepen military cooperation  • Strike staged in Bangladesh to protest top opposition leader's sentence  • Iraq's parliament bans IS, pro-terrorism websites  • Spotlight: World needs to unite in terrorism fighting, abandon double standards  • Swedish driver takes provisional pole for F3 Macau Grand Prix  • No prospects for resuming Palestinian-Israeli peace talks: official  
You are here: 　 Home

England junior doctors vote to strike over contract dispute

Xinhua, November 19, 2015 Adjust font size:

Junior doctors in England on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to go on strike in December due to a contract dispute.

A ballot result, carried out by British Medical Association (BMA), revealed that 99.4 percent voters were prepared to take part in industrial action short of a strike and 98 percent said they were prepared to take part in a strike action.

It said more than 37,000 junior doctors in England took part in the ballot, over two-thirds of the workforce.

"This gives the BMA a resounding mandate for industrial action, including a full walkout," said BMA.

The first walk-out will start from 8 a.m. on Dec. 1 to 8 a.m. on Dec. 2, only emergency care will be provided. While the second and third full walk-outs will be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Dec. 8 and 16.

BMA said that new contracts covering working hours and payment for junior doctors do not provide sufficient safeguards for doctors and patients. Two years of negotiations between the two sides failed to break the deadlock.

However, the British government said they would impose the new contract on junior doctors in England from August 2016. BMA maintained the new contract was unfair and unsafe.

"We regret the inevitable disruption this will cause but it is the government's adamant insistence on imposing a contract that is unsafe for patients in the future, and unfair for doctors now and in the future, that has brought us to this point," said Mark Porter, BMA council chair.

Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health, wrote BMA this week to say industrial action was avoidable and urged BMA to return to negotiations.

Porter said the health secretary was right that the action was avoidable. "Our message to him is that junior doctors have today made their views perfectly clear. But it is still possible to get back around the negotiating table to deliver a contract that is safe for patients, that contains the necessary contractual safeguards to prevent junior doctors being overworked and that properly recognizes evening and weekend work," he said. Enditem