For many years Healthcare assistants, Maternity support workers, Imaging care assistants at Derriford Hospital Plymouth have been working as band 3s whilst in a band 2 role.
UNISON identified the organising opportunity and sent people into the hospital to talk to staff, identify new reps and recruit more HCAs into the union so we would be strong enough to make an impact.
One of those New Reps Jo Barrows takes up the story
After management failed to resolve things effectively a ballot was sent out for members to deliver a mandate to go on industrial action for fairer pay for patient care.
In May 2024 the results were in, which came in at 98% to start industrial action, so we were going on strike and members were ecstatic.
We arranged 2 strike days for the 17th and 18th June, when midnight arrived of the 17th June, workers who were on the night shift walked out to begin their 48-hour strike action.
The atmosphere on the picket line was sensational, the sun was shining all day and all HCAs/MCA/ICAs were all out on force. We were all there on the line with our flags and cheering for fairer pay. Members returned back to work midnight on the 19th June knowing we had made an impact.
Before we started striking, we started a little group of unison reps and some leaders to help lead the members and arrange and update the other members. There was around 10 of us.
The first 2 strike days there were 161 members on the 1st day and 140 on the second day. After the first 2 days of striking, we received an offer from the trust, which after some discussing we declined it as it offered us £3000 for 5 years.
After that we arranged more strike days which we decided we’d make it 3 days instead seeing as we had a good turn out from the previous days, we arranged our strike dates to be 17th, 18th and 19th of July. Again, our strike would start at midnight on the 17th and end at 23:59 on the 19th, members working the night would again leave their wards at midnight to start their walk out.
The sun was shining again, there were huge crowds again of healthcare assistants on the picket line, we were getting cheers from cars and buses when they passed us, we had visits from some executive staff, the chief of nursing to come and speak to us, we did have to close up the picket line by 2pm as the weather was hot and we didn’t want anyone getting heat stroke.
After the 3 days were up, we began negotiating meetings with the trust, we met up several times with them to come to an arrangement, after each meeting we gave what information we could to the other members and we had a couple workers meetings so we could have a face to face meeting for members to ask questions and give them information.
Towards the end of September we came to an arrangement and an offer that was better so we put it towards the members so they could ballot again to whether they agree to it or refused it. The ballot closed on the 4th November and after the results were in, we had 99% of members in favour for the offer.
The trust arranged for us to the paid the compensatory payment in our Decembers pay day which I got just as I was writing this
In the end all members were happy with what they received, we all thought we were worth a lot more than what we were, we all work long hours and have first hand, hands on with patient care.
We all spoke about it after and we would do it all over again in a heartbeat and we just want to say thank you to unison for helping us achieve this.
Thank you
Jo
