Hospital Healthcare Workers Begin Month-Long Strike

Hundreds of healthcare support workers at Kettering and Northampton General and Leicester’s hospitals have begun a month-long strike as they ramp up action in row over pay.

It represents a significant escalation in the UNISON members’ on-going campaign, which has already seen several shorter walk-outs.

The union says for years, the healthcare support workers were not being paid at the correct rate for the increasingly complex tasks they were doing.

Senior hospital managers have agreed to move the workers onto the higher band 3, but the sticking point has been the level of back pay the three trusts are prepared to agree for all the years staff were effectively being underpaid, says UNISON.

Staff on a picket-line outside Kettering General Hospital during a previous strike

UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea said: “None of the staff working at the five hospitals wants to go on strike. But senior managers at the three trusts are digging in their heels and refusing to negotiate an end to the dispute.

​”The trusts have been paying the health workers unfairly for years. All the staff want is what they’re owed, but hospital managers won’t talk to them.

​”The ball is completely in the court of the hospitals’ senior directors. Trusts elsewhere in the country who’ve faced similar disputes have come up with enough back pay to end strikes.

​”Now it’s up to Kettering, Leicester and Northampton hospital managers to show their staff they value the incredible work they do, get around the table and agree a fairer package of compensation.”

The hospitals have been approached for comment.