Healthcare workers vote to strike over pay

HEALTHCARE assistants from County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust have voted to strike in a dispute over fair pay. Trade union Unison has made it clear that staff will walk out in the coming weeks unless there's an improvement in the amount of back pay that the trust is prepared to give them.

- OWEN YOUNGER

The NHS workers have been regraded to a higher band of the NHS Agenda for Change salary scale to reflect their increasingly complex jobs. As a result, Unison says that they deserve adequate back pay to reflect the extra work they've been doing above their pay rate for many years.

This comes after the trust awarded just seven months' money, with the union saying that this should be far higher. Despite months of negotiations with the employer to settle the dispute, the union feels that a fair offer which the health workers find acceptable has not been put forward.