Healthcare assistants at Kettering and Northampton General Hospitals announce month-long strike during August

Healthcare support workers at hospitals across Kettering, Northampton and Leicester are set for industrial action, citing their employers' ‘intransigence’ and failure to address their claims for back pay.

The strike, involving hundreds of healthcare assistants, maternity support workers, theatre support workers and other clinical support workers across three trusts, marks a significant escalation in their fight for compensation.

For years, healthcare support workers (HCSWs) say they have been performing duties well above their pay banding, consistently seeking re-banding to band 3.

One HCSW, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “I’m at a loss to understand why the trust is being so intransigent. The NHS has settled the same dispute elsewhere in the UK, such as Bedford Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, who recently paid HCSWs what they were entitled to, back to August 2019.

“It just feels like our trust simply doesn’t care about frontline staff and fails to recognise our contribution.

“During Covid, I put my job and my patients above myself and my family. I only asked what my patients needed, and now the trust has turned me out on the street to fight for money I have rightfully earned."

Although union members at KGH, NHG and Leicester have successfully secured re-banding for future work, they say the back pay is less than half of which the workers are entitled to receive under their employment contracts. They say additional duties, including taking blood, conducting patient observations, performing complex procedures like ECGs and assisting in childbirth have been ignored going back decades.

Unison is demanding back pay from April 2018, which it says is ‘precisely’ what workers are entitled to receive under their employment contracts. In June this year healthcare assistants at KGH and NGH walked out for three days.

However, the union says, hospital bosses have offered less than half this amount and are now refusing to negotiate.

Gareth Eales from Unison East Midlands said: "We have listened to our members - none of us want these strikes - but the way HCSWs are being treated simply isn’t fair. We want meaningful negotiations. Let’s get around the table and resolve this dispute with a deal that isn’t insulting to Unison members who have been knowingly and systematically underpaid and undervalued for years.”

At NGH and KGH, Unison submitted a formal pay claim on October 25, 2023. A collective grievance signed by over 700 members and a formal trade dispute was submitted on January 24, 2024.

In response, the trusts announced the imposition of re-banding to band 3 on February 9, which was implemented on April, 1, 2024.

Consultative ballots in NGH and KGH saw over 95 per cent of members express a desire to be balloted for strike action.

Industrial action ballots closed on May 17, 2024. Voting ‘yes’ to strike action were 92.6 per cent of the NGH staff with 95.1 per cent at KGH agreeing to the walkout.