That’s enough, junior doctors – the NHS has bigger problems The NHS faces far more serious problems than the working conditions of one section of its workers. Now it’s up to the BMA to move towards a strike settlement
‘It’s everyone’s fight,” said the stickers that striking
junior doctors handed out at picket lines and protest stalls last week. But is it really? The chief medical officer has warned that strikes will lead to patient suffering: tens of thousands of operations and appointments will have been cancelled as a result of strikes so far. The health select committee chair – a doctor herself – called them
“extreme” and “appalling”.
Doctors’ union the BMA insists that the government – and the new junior doctor contract it is proposing – are an even bigger threat to patient safety. Its claims merit at least the scrutiny we’d apply to teaching or train driver unions whose strikes lead to school and tube closures.
Let’s call a spade a spade. This is a workplace dispute about terms and conditions, not a campaign to save the NHS
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