\n Hundreds of healthcare assistants at Blackpool Victoria, Clifton, and Fleetwood hospitals were set to begin a 73-hour strike on Monday, October 20, but the walkout was suspended.\n<\/p>\n
\n The dispute centred on unpaid back wages for duties including taking blood samples, performing electrocardiogram tests, and inserting cannulas.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sam Doherty, regional organiser for UNISON North West, said: “This is an amazing victory for the healthcare assistants in Blackpool, putting millions of pounds into the pockets of some of Blackpool\u2019s lowest-paid NHS workers.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Despite the trust\u2019s initial refusal to pay them what they were owed, the staff stood together, took strike action and won.\n<\/p>\n
\n “This is a huge victory, but the campaign won\u2019t end until we\u2019ve ironed out the final details.\n<\/p>\n
\n “The trust needs to guarantee everybody is included and that deal is implemented fairly and swiftly.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Before a previous 48-hour strike in September, Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust acknowledged that staff had been performing duties above their pay grade and agreed to compensate them.\n<\/p>\n
\n READ MORE:\n<\/p>\n
\n However, it was only after further negotiations that the trust agreed to drop plans to withhold some of the money owed to staff.\n<\/p>\n
\n Following UNISON\u2019s campaign, the 700 healthcare assistants will now work at a higher pay band, and the union estimates they will be awarded more than \u00a36 million in back pay.\n<\/p>\n
\n The re-banding will also see staff moved to a higher pay grade moving forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of healthcare assistants at Blackpool Victoria, Clifton, and Fleetwood hospitals were set to begin a 73-hour strike…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-208920","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}