First-year doctors in England have voted in favour of strike action over unemployment and training place shortages.
The British Medical Association (BMA) said the ballot of first-year resident doctors saw 97% vote for strike action, providing a “mandate for industrial action alongside the linked dispute over eroded pay”.
The voter turnout was 65%, it added.
The BMA said no strikes are currently planned, but current talks with the government on pay “will now have to produce a solution on jobs as well as the 21% pay erosion resident doctors have endured since 2008 to avoid future action.”
The ballot came after a BMA survey of more than 4,000 resident doctors – who were formerly known as junior doctors – saw 34% say they had no substantive employment or regular work from August this year. This rose to 52% for doctors in their second year.
The union says there is a shortage of training spaces.
In 2025, more than 30,000 doctors have competed for just 10,000 places in the first round of speciality training, “leaving thousands of doctors facing the prospect of unemployment at a time when the NHS is critically understaffed”.
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The BMA’s resident doctors chair Jack Fletcher said: “Doctors have [today] spoken clearly: they won’t accept that they face a career of insecurity at a time when the demand for doctors is huge.
“Yet successive governments have been unable to embrace the changes both doctors and patients are crying out for.
“We do not want to have to strike, but we will if we are left with no choice.”
The shortage of training spots and job insecurity is compounded by ongoing pay struggles, the BMA has said. It claims resident doctors in England have suffered a 21% erosion in pay since 2008.
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