Junior doctors in Wales are preparing for a walkout from 15 January for 72 hours, after a vote in favour of strike action. The dispute concerns under-inflation pay following a 29.6% cut in salaries for junior doctors since 2008. While members of BMA Cymru Wales’ junior doctors committee have been offered under-inflation payments of 5%, they claim to be more focused on restoring salaries in line with inflation than securing a pay rise. Of the voting doctors in Wales, 98% voted in favour of the strike action.
The Welsh government has described the result of the poll as “disappointing” but claimed that it cannot meet doctors’ pay demands without additional funding from the UK government. The government cited the example of the need to make tens of millions of pounds in cuts in order to provide overspend bail-outs for health boards. The government questioned whether there was any headroom for improving junior doctors’ pay.
The proposed strike comes as junior doctors around the UK complain about pay cuts that have reduced their salaries by nearly a third in real terms over the past decade. In Northern Ireland, a BMA poll of negotiating doctors is expected to result in a proposed 24-hour strike in March, while junior doctors in England are due to take strike action for five days in late December and early January. In Scotland, junior doctors have secured a pay rise of 12.4%, which will be applied retroactively from April 2023.
Currently, there are almost four thousand registered junior doctors in Wales, working in both hospitals and GP’s practices. The term “junior doctors” includes medical professionals with up to 11 years of experience who have not yet reached consultant level
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