Kettering General Hospital healthcare assistants strike for fair pay

Kettering General Hospital healthcare assistants strike for fair pay. Members of Unison on the picket line in Rothwell Road outside KGH

Transcript

00:00 What do we want? Fair pay! When do we want it? Now!

00:04 Who's the backbone of the NHS? Healthcare workers!

00:08 What do we want? Fair pay! When do we want it? Now!

00:25 So for far too long, health care assistants here at HM General Hospital

00:28 have been paid as band 2 health care assistants.

00:32 Now if you're paid at band 2, you should do things like personal care

00:36 which is feeding, bathing, toileting.

00:40 However, for so long, these HTAs have been doing clinical duties

00:44 including taking blood pressures, taking bloods, doing wound dressings, bladder scans

00:51 all work which by the NHS's own agenda for change is banned through.

00:55 So for far too long, these people have been doing work that they've not been paying for.

01:00 And while we may have got a lot of success in getting them re-banded to band 3

01:05 what we're fighting for now is back pay.

01:08 Because they deserve to be paid for the work they do.

01:11 And at the present, the offer is only for 2 years and 7 months

01:16 and we're asking them to go back much longer so that these people get the pay that they deserve.

01:21 It's a brilliant turnout today and a lot of them have been here since 7 o'clock this morning.

01:26 You know, a lot of these people have never been on strike before

01:29 and they don't want to be on strike.

01:31 But the press does not listen to them and this is the only way they can make them see

01:36 just how passionate they are about being treated fairly.

01:40 [Chanting]