ANGRY NHS workers on strike outside Barnsley hospital in South Yorkshire spoke to News Line yesterday.
Ellen Newberry, deputy chair of Junior Doctors Committee (BMA), warned: ‘Our pay has been cut by 26% in the last 15 years, and our first-year doctors are now only earning £14 per hour
‘We’re not asking for a pay rise we’re just asking for the pay that we have lost to be returned to us.
‘Junior doctors can have been qualified for 10 or 12 years. These are the doctors that restart your heart when it stops, have to perform brain surgery and open up your vessels when you’ve had a heart attack. Yes I do believe we are more valuable than the pay we get.’
Striker David Williams added: ‘After 13 years of training, I attend the cardiac arrests of over a hundred patients at night.
‘I think this deserves more than £24 an hour. I think it’s unreasonable that the government refuses to negotiate. It just makes us feel very undervalued.’
On the picket line at Homerton Hospital in Hackney, east London, Dr McDonald said: ‘We’re all striking on the same theme as other NHS workers, we’re all being overworked more than ever. Our relative path has never been lower.
‘I think the combination of the pandemic and the spiralling cost of living has brought our pay issue into sharp focus and we all felt the taking of strike action was the last option left to us to get the government to see sense.
‘I think there has to be a realistic pay offer by the government and that will help people stay in the profession as well as making them feel more valued.’
On a lively picket line at the Whittington Hospital in north London, BMA rep, Frederika told News Line: ‘The crux of the matter is really that our pay has been reduced by over a quarter in a decade, with an ever increasing workload, especially during and after the pandemic and this has led to many doctors leaving the profession, with over 130,000 vacancies in the NHS, ever-increasing waiting times and patient safety issues.
‘We’re striking today because we want to continue working as doctors but that would only be sustainable with improvements to pay and conditions.
‘Ultimately every patient deserves to be treated by a doctor who feels valued and has had time to eat and sleep. We want Barclay (Tory Health Secretary) to come to the table and negotiate. He’ll have to at some point, we’ve been waiting eight months.
‘We feel solidarity with everyone working in the NHS and hope they get pay and conditions that make them feel valued for the work they do.’
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