‘Taken for granted’: Plymouth HCAs plan further strikes

Unison today announced that health and nursing assistants, maternity assistants and other clinical support staff at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust will go on strike for a second time over pay.

“We all feel very self-evident”

Leon Shrigley

The support workers, currently classified in Agenda for Change Pay Band 2, are demanding a promotion to Pay Band 3 because they say they perform clinical tasks that are above their pay grade.

In addition, they are demanding payment of wages for the years in which they performed these tasks without receiving equivalent remuneration.

The new strike, which follows one in June, will see hundreds of workers walk out for three days starting Wednesday, July 17, public service union Unison said.

According to Unison, the trust failed to offer a fair deal in the negotiations over the back payments by only offering them for six months.

The union launched the industrial action in Plymouth as part of a nationwide campaign to upgrade HCAs in trusts across England.

In some trusts where Unison members went on strike for the same reason, offers of back pay stretched back to March 2017.

This was the case, for example, for a limited number of HCAs at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust.

Leon Shrigley, imaging assistant and Unison representative at the Plymouth Trust, said: “I love my job. But we all feel like we are being taken for granted.”

“Without us, the hospital could not function. We care for people who are in very poor health and work in an acute high-pressure situation.

“My colleagues and I regularly perform clinical examinations and CPR. It’s an insult when you consider that we could all earn more per hour if we worked as baristas in a coffee shop.”

Unison claimed the upgrade was worth almost £2,000 a year to some HCAs and could leave them with thousands in back pay.

Kerry Baigent, the union’s South West regional secretary, added: “It is time for University Hospitals Plymouth to follow the example of other hospitals in the South West and pay its nursing assistants a fair wage.”

“Carers are not prepared to see their hard work undervalued any longer. They definitely don’t want to quit, but the trust is giving them no other choice.”

The HCAs will form a picket line outside Derriford Hospital, the Trust’s largest site, from 7am next Wednesday to make their demands known to managers and the public.

A spokesman for University Hospitals Plymouth Trust said in response to the strikes: “We recognise and value the enormous contribution that all of our healthcare staff make to our patients.”

“We continue to work with our employees and unions to initiate negotiations with the aim of recognizing our healthcare workers and ultimately resolving the current dispute.

“We are committed to offering healthcare workers a solution, but we respect our colleagues’ right to strike and recognise that this can be a difficult decision both professionally and personally.”

The spokesman added that measures would be taken to help patients “cope with any disruption” caused by the industrial action.