Over 650 ambulance workers serving Cumbria, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Glossop have begun voting on strike action
The workers, including paramedics and emergency call handlers, are angry over the NHS Agenda for Change pay award, which was around 4 per cent and was imposed last month. The award falls well short of the real rate of inflation, RPI, which stands at 12.6 per cent.
The imposed award meant most staff received an increase of around £100 per month in their pay packet.
The ballot for strike action opens today (Wednesday 26 October) and ends on 30 November.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Over more than a decade, NHS workers’ wages have been eroded, even as workloads became increasingly unmanageable. Now with soaring living costs, the situation is critical.
“The impact of this real terms pay cut will result in the flood of overworked and underpaid workers leaving the NHS becoming a tsunami. The government must put forward a proper pay rise or else the NHS will go from being on its knees to being on life support.”
In a recent consultative ballot over pay, Unite members employed by the North West Ambulance Service voted by 92 per cent to strike. Nearly all (98 per cent) said that the pay award announced by the UK government back in July 2022 was unfair.
Unite regional officer Gary Owen said: “The anger amongst our North West Ambulance Service members at rapidly diminishing living standards, increasingly threadbare services and ever more unsustainable workloads, is such that we are balloting for strike action.
“The government must put forward a better pay deal and one that does not come out of existing, soon to be horrifically squeezed, budgets.”
