NHS managers must ensure health workers are on the correct salary bands for the jobs they do or risk further strike action this year, Unison said today.

Since 2021, the public service union has taken an employer-by-employer approach to help healthcare assistants across Britain win wage rises, including around £80 million in back pay, to make up for years of receiving significantly less than they should have.

Unison’s Fair Pay for Patient Care campaign has prompted salary boosts for nearly 36,000 healthcare assistants and other clinical support workers, after their salaries increasingly failed to reflect their more complex job responsibilities.

According to NHS guidance, healthcare assistants on the lowest Agenda for Change salaries (band 2) should only be providing personal care such as bathing and feeding patients.

But Unison says support staff have been routinely undertaking more involved clinical tasks, including taking and monitoring blood samples and performing electrocardiogram tests.

This should have pushed their roles into a higher (band 3) bracket, which is worth almost £2,000 a year more.

Unison says members have often staged weeks of industrial action to win the correct wages and back pay for support staff.

More than 40 deals have now been won by the Fair Pay for Patient Care campaign.

Successes include Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge Community Services NHS Trust and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust.

Unison is now demanding that other NHS employers do the right thing and pay healthcare assistants the money they’re owed.

At the start of the week, hundreds of workers at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth walked out for the first time in a rebanding dispute. 

Max, a theatre assistant in Plymouth, said: “We’d been left with no option but to strike.

“Staff just want to be banded correctly and paid fairly for the work they do.

“For years, people have worked beyond their band without the correct wage.”

Elsewhere, healthcare assistants employed by Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust are due to strike in the coming weeks.

Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said: “If staff don’t feel valued and believe they’re being taken advantage of, they’re much less likely to stay working in the NHS. 

“All trusts should do the right thing and ensure they’re paying their entire workforce fairly.

“Managers shouldn’t leave it until a strike is called before deciding to act.

“But if that’s what it takes, then that’s what staff will do to win fair pay for patient care.”