{"id":214861,"date":"2025-10-21T06:41:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T06:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/214861\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T06:41:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T06:41:08","slug":"underpaid-hospital-workers-stage-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/214861\/","title":{"rendered":"Underpaid hospital workers stage protest"},"content":{"rendered":"

They are calling on the health board to honour its promise to pay them fairly, the agreement that was previously unexpectedly broken\"SingletonSingleton Hospital is under the health board<\/p>\n

Healthcare support workers employed at a Welsh health board will stage a protest on Tuesday as they demand fair pay. The workers say they feel “betrayed” after Swansea<\/a> Bay University Health Board pulled a deal to correct years of underpayment at the last minute “without explanation”<\/a>. Members of the predominantly female low-paid workforce were due to receive compensation in their pay packets in November to end a previous dispute.<\/a><\/p>\n

It followed years of staff having to carry out work that fell outside of their NHS band two pay grade. <\/a>The compensation could have been as high as \u00a37,000 for some workers before tax and National Insurance depending on their circumstances and length of service.<\/p>\n

Support workers previously voted to strike over the issue following a two-year campaign for improved wages. Never miss a Swansea story by signing up to our newsletter here<\/a><\/p>\n

That led to Swansea Bay University Health Board executives pledging to move staff onto a higher pay band and provide recognition payments and back pay by December 31 this year.<\/p>\n

However earlier this month the health board tore up a local agreement that was reached 10 months ago according to several workers and confirmed by Unison the union.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for the health board said the issue had been “picked up nationally” and so it had decided to pause implementing the local agreement and are “eager for the all-Wales discussions to be concluded so that we don\u2019t run any risk of disadvantaging our staff”.<\/p>\n

Speaking to WalesOnline earlier in October one health worker called the health board’s decision “a devastating blow” and said it “sends out a damaging message” that health support workers are “less worthy” because many are not university educated.<\/p>\n

It has now been confirmed that on Tuesday, October 21 health support workers will gather outside Swansea Bay University Health Board HQ to deliver a 2,000-signature petition.<\/p>\n

Staff attending the gathering – which has been organised with Unison the union – are calling on the health board to honour its promise to pay them fairly, the agreement that was previously unexpectedly broken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They are calling on the health board to honour its promise to pay them fairly, the agreement that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,104,2966,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-214861","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-nhs","11":"tag-swansea","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214861","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=214861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}