Industrial action
Junior doctors have moved a step closer to unprecedented strike action. The industrial action ballot result, announced last month by the British Medical Association which represents junior doctors, gave a huge mandate — 98% voted for strike action. Voter turnout was 76%.
Three days of strike action are planned for December unless the government relents in its plans to impose a new contract which will drastically reduce the periods in which hospital doctors can claim additional “out of hours” payments (see Labour Research, November 2015, page 5).
Meanwhile, members of the UCU lecturers’ union employed at further education colleges took strike action on 10 November after the employers’ body rejected the joint trade unions’ pay claim for an additional £1 per hour for college staff. Around 20,000 lecturers took strike action in over 200 colleges.
UCU members at the Open University have also voted for strike action over plans to axe seven regional centres, putting 502 jobs at risk. A one-day strike was called across the university for 25 November, to be followed by rolling strikes across the affected centres.
In the school sector, the NUT teaching union announced a further 11 days’ discontinuous strike action in November and December at Alfreton Grange College in Derbyshire over the introduction of a nine-period teaching day.
This follows on from five days of strike action already taken at the school by mid-November.
http://bma.org.uk/news-views-analysis/news/2015/november/juniors-on-the-brink-of-industrial-action