Anyway so all over England junior doctors are on strike. The whole situation is pretty bonkers.
Bad working conditions? Junior Doctor labor camps? What's their beef?
New contracts that the government is trying to introduce. The government wants the health service to be more of a full 7-day service, rather than full service in the week with emergency cover and some additional cover at weekends, which is the case in many places at the moment. One thing it wants to do is change Saturdays to "normal" working days that get paid at normal rate, but then increase basic pay by 11% to mostly compensate. As far as I can tell, this is the only remaining sticking point in the discussions - the doctors union refuses to accept that Saturdays should be normal working days. Basically the union insists that a lot of junior doctors will get a pay cut overall, while the government insists that 99% will get paid the same or more on the new contracts. And because nobody seems to want to actually publish their analysis, it's hard to know who is accurate.
But really, when it comes down to it, it's all just bullshit politics.