Healthcare support workers at Colchester and Ipswich Hospitals have been paid thousands of pounds less than they should have been following a pay agreement, according to the union Unison. The union represents healthcare support workers at the hospitals, which are run by the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust. Earlier this year, the trust and the union agreed to introduce a new, national pay-band structure for healthcare assistants. However, Unison said some staff members have not received their full wage.
This has left some of the longest-serving staff without thousands of pounds that they were promised following the pay agreement. Unison claims that workers at the hospitals have been paid “for years on the lower band 2 of the NHS Agenda for Care salary scale” despite performing duties for which they should have been on a higher band. These duties included blood monitoring, inserting cannulas, and performing echocardiograms.
Unison eastern regional officer Lucas Bertholdi-Saad criticised the trust for using healthcare support workers “to provide care on the cheap”. Bertholdi-Saad said that the workers “were delighted when the trust finally agreed to give them the respect, recognition, and pay they deserved” but had been disappointed when they did not receive the amount they had been promised in their wage packets.
The trust’s CEO Nick Hulme said that some staff members had received more than £4,000 in back pay and that talks were ongoing with Unison to address the problem. Unison had threatened to take strike action this summer before the pay agreement was reached
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More
