{"id":645741,"date":"2026-06-18T18:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T18:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/645741\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T18:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T18:04:12","slug":"theatre-assistants-at-hospitals-in-leeds-to-take-strike-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/645741\/","title":{"rendered":"Theatre assistants at hospitals in Leeds to take strike action"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hospital staff in Leeds, who are to strike for two weeks over low pay and disputes over back pay, have said they have been left with &#8220;little choice&#8221; not to take industrial action.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Theatre assistants, who are members of Unison, will begin action on 22 June across three NHS sites in Leeds, including Leeds General Infirmary, St James&#8217;s University Hospital and Chapel Allerton Hospital.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Unison said the workers are currently on the lowest pay grade in the NHS but frequently carry out duties above that grade.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dr Elizabeth Garthwaite, from Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said plans are in place to minimise disruption in their services during industrial action.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Theatre assistants support fellow staff in the theatre room, and according to Unison, earn less than \u00a313 per hour.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It would cost &#8220;little more&#8221; than \u00a31 extra for them to move up to the next pay grade, which is more in line with the work they carry out, according to the union.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Since the launch of the union&#8217;s Pay Fair for Patient Care campaign, many healthcare support staff in England and Wales have secured regrading and back pay settlements. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hospital staff in Leeds, who are to strike for two weeks over low pay and disputes over back&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-645741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645741","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=645741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}