Hundreds of workers across Nottingham's hospitals could strike in a row over pay. Healthcare assistants (HCA) at the Queen's Medical Centre and City Hospital voted to take industrial action on Wednesday, March 19, paving the way for potential disruption to services.
Unison, which represents 890 of the workers across Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH), said they had been working "well above their salary band for years". After 94 per cent of members backed the walk out, the union said hospital bosses have until March 27 to come up with an improved offer on back pay.
“Healthcare assistants want to continue providing exceptional care to people across Nottingham. However, they need to be fairly paid for their work," said Unison East Midlands head of health Gareth Eales.
“The majority of healthcare assistants have been working well above their salary band for years. It’s time the trust did the right thing and paid them properly for that work.”
HCAs provide direct support and assistance to patients work under the guidance of nurses or other healthcare professionals. According to NHS guidance, they are on salary band 2 and should only be providing personal care, such as bathing and feeding patients.
However, Unison says most of the HCAs have routinely undertaken clinical tasks, such as taking blood, performing electrocardiogram tests and inserting cannulas. Helen, an HCA in Nottingham, said: "NHS staff risked their lives and those of our families to put others first during the pandemic, and continue to do so every day.
"But it's clear the trust doesn’t think workers are worthy of being paid what they’ve have rightfully earned.” NUH said the workers had already had their pay increased and expressed disappointment over the industrial action.
Danielle Petch, chief people officer at the trust, said: “Health care support worker colleagues at NUH have already been re-banded with associated increased pay to better reflect the important clinical activities that this group of staff carry out. This follows an extensive review to look at the work undertaken by our health care support workers over a number of years, and whether their banding is correct for the duties they undertake.
“The re-banding follows a robust process with the five unions who represent this workforce, resulting in support from four of the five. It is disappointing that agreement could not be reached with UNISON.
“For those colleagues this affects we have agreed that they will receive back pay to August 2021, which is in line with a national update on job profiles for health care support workers. We are making the payments from April onwards and when all back pay has been paid, this is expected to total over £10m.
“Our hospitals could not run without the skill and dedication of our health care support workers, they have been and remain a hugely valued group of colleagues.”
