Junior doctors' strike: We will not be ignored, vow campaigners on picket lines
'The government thinks they can just ignore us and we'll go away' - the words of junior doctors in the Black Country who haven taken strike action again over the proposed contracts to be introduced by health secretary Jeremy Hunt.
Despite the torrential rain, dozens of doctors stood at picket lines at Wolverhampton's New Cross Hospital, Sandwell Hospital and Dudley's Russells Hall Hospital.
The two-day strike follows protests that took place on January 12 and February 10 this year, with further picket lines planned from April 4 to 6 and April 26 to 28.
Mark Winchester, 25, a core training doctor in psychiatry, said at the picket at Russells Hall: "Jeremy Hunt should be working for us, not against us. It's insulting to impose this contract, he is not listening to us at all. We are left frustrated that it has again come to this."
If implemented, the contracts proposed by Hunt will see all 45,000 junior doctors in the UK contracted to work what was previously deemed 'unsociable hours' but for a lesser rate of pay, as if they were working normal, sociable hours.
Doctors will also be expected to work on Saturdays, and pay increases linked to time in the job will be scrapped.
Anna Gregory, 31, trainee paediatrician and mother of two from Bromsgrove, who works in the neo-natal unit at Wolverhampton's New Cross, said: "I'm married to another junior doctor, Christopher McAloon, and we have two small children under five - Isabelle who is four and William who is 18 months. For us its more about the time we will lose together as a family if the contracts come in. If the government contractually make us woke Saturdays we will lose our precious family time. Where can our children go if we're both at work? No nurseries are open on a Saturday."
Also at New Cross was Becky Kelly, 28,a junior anaesthetist who lives in Birmingham, "The government aren't even giving with one had and taking away, they're just taking away. Ultimately it costs so much to even qualify now, with the courses going up with inflation and part time doctors effectively working full time hours that doctors are moving away. These are people that want to be doctors but are being forced abroad because it's getting so bad. We're just not being listened to," she said.
At Sandwell Hospital, fourth year specialist trainee Catherine McGrath said: "The government thinks they can just ignore us and we'll go away. But people are realising more and more how harmful the new contracts will be. The people making the decisions don't seem to understand how the NHS operates
The prospect of the new contracts being introduced has, according to junior doctors, led to a drop in morale, with many looking to work abroad instead of stumping up further costs to train in the UK.
