24 November 2014
Ambulance workers picket outside the headquarters of the London Ambulance Service. Photo Workers.
Monday 24 November 2014. Health workers throughout England walked out on strike this morning for four hours in their long-running dispute over pay. The action followed a similar walkout on 13 November.
Interviewed outside London Ambulance headquarters in Lambeth, south London, Unison General Secretary Dave Prentis lambasted Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s unilateral decision to intervene in the NHS pay system to deny health workers in England the 1 per cent awarded by the “independent” NHS Pay Review Body.
Workers doing the same jobs in Scotland and now Wales have been paid, which also reveals the extent to which a national pay system now barely exists.
The second four-hour strike was well supported, with two more unions – the Society of Radiologists and the British Dietetics Association – involved than on 13 October, making 10 in all. If unions agree to escalate the dispute with further action then more unions are likely to come on board.
The walkout will be followed up with six days of action short of a strike, with a work to rule being imposed.
Hunt is now isolated and, like the rag bag government he represents, he must go.