Junior doctors across Wales are starting a three-day strike over pay as the Welsh government and hospital leaders warned of the pressures that health services are under.
During the stoppage, which is due to begin at 7am on Monday and last until 7am on Thursday, more than 3,000 doctors could take industrial action. The Welsh NHS Confederation, which represents health boards in Wales, said the strike would coincide with one of the “most pressurised weeks of the year, following recent weeks of significant winter pressures”.
The Welsh health minister, Eluned Morgan, said the impact on services was expected to be significant, but added that care in urgent and life-threatening cases would continue. The stoppage follows an unprecedented six-day strike by junior doctors in England that ended last week and led to more than 110,000 patients having care cancelled.
The doctors’ trade union, BMA Cymru Wales, said the vote to strike was taken as part of a campaign to restore levels of pay, which they argue have been eroded by almost a third since 2008-09 when pay began to decrease in real terms.
Dr Oba Babs-Osibodu and Dr Peter Fahey, co-chairs of BMA Cymru Wales’s junior doctors committee, said: “No doctor wants to strike. We had hoped the Welsh government had properly understood the strength of feeling amongst junior doctors in Wales. Sadly, their inaction over this matter has led us here today, demoralised, frustrated and angry.”
The union said doctors would be present at picket lines outside all of Wales’s main hospital sites as well as taking their concerns to members of the Senedd with a planned mass demonstration on Tuesday. The Welsh junior doctors committee made the decision to ballot members in August after being offered a 5% deal by the Welsh government.
Babs-Osibodu and Fahey said: “Our members have been forced to take this difficult decision because junior doctors in Wales have experienced a pay cut of 29.6% in real terms over the last 15 years.”
The health minister said pay restoration for junior doctors in Wales was impossible without a significant increase in funding from the UK government.
“We are disappointed junior doctors have voted for industrial action, but we understand the strength of feeling among BMA members,” Morgan said. “The UK government has failed, over the last 13 years, to properly fund public services. The Welsh government’s budget in 2024 to 2025 would be £3bn higher if it had grown in line with the economy since 2010.”
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Darren Hughes, the director of the Welsh NHS Confederation, said: “It’s a concern for NHS leaders that this industrial action will be taking place on one of the most pressurised weeks of the year, following recent weeks of significant winter pressures.”
“The focus is now on mitigating risks as far as possible.”