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Senior doctors in England vote to go on strike over pay dispute with govt.

Junior doctors hold a strike amid a dispute with the government over pay, in London. (Photo by Reuters)

Senior doctors in England have voted to go on strike later this month in a pay dispute with the British government.

Some 86 percent of consultants chose to take action, with a 71 percent turnout, according to the British Medical Association (BMA) -- a trade union representing the doctors.

Unless the government presents a “credible pay offer,” they’ll walk out July 20-21, the BMA said on Tuesday.

The union says consultants' take-home pay fell 35 percent between 2008/9 and 2021/22, with the squeeze further compounded by double-digit inflation over the last year.  

Junior doctors represented by the BMA are also expected to strike for an unprecedented five days from July 13, the longest strike in the history of the state-funded National Health Service (NHS).

Earlier this month, thousands of junior doctors launched their third round of strikes, signaling the government’s inability to put an end to the long-running dispute over payments amid soaring inflation.

The move poses yet an additional problem for the UK government as it struggles with industrial action across the public and private sectors by workers who are demanding pay rises amid the cost of living crisis.

The vote comes after a separate ballot among nurses of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) fell short of the threshold needed for them to continue months of damaging industrial action.

Nurses have taken strike action three times since December but the RCN needed the support of its members at another ballot to continue strikes.

Strikes by nurses, ambulance workers and junior doctors, which began with the first RCN walkout in December last year, have led to the cancellation of more than 650,000 operations and procedures by the NHS in England.


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