26 August 2026
Demonstrating for the NHS, March 2023, London. The fight for wages, jobs and the future of the service has continues in many different areas. Photo Workers.
Health workers around the country have been in action over the summer, in many different parts of the NHS.
Doctors have been most prominent in the news. In July Workers reported on the consultants’ ballot for action on pay, since when the government has been through three health secretaries. And GPs in England have rejected government-imposed contract changes for the 2026-27 period.
Erosion
Other health professions have not been idle: all face the same problem of pay erosion. Dissatisfaction among the 1.3 million workers on Agenda for Change contracts remains high.
In late 2025, 13 out of the 14 health trade unions withdrew from the NHS Pay Review Body. They realised that it was a dead end and beyond reform. A better strategy than appealing to review bodies is for union members to use their strength where they are.
Workers has reported on some of these disputes over the past year – from phlebotomists to dentists to health care assistants but there are many more.
Banding
Unite members at the South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust remain on strike over banding and unequal pay. Health visitors at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board in South Wales – also Unite members – remain on strike over a damaging pay banding in dispute running since February.
Their weekly action is scheduled until past October 2026. The board could easily resolve the dispute by placing the health visitors in the more appropriate professional band 7 instead of 6.
Outsourced
GMB members, employed by global outsourcing giant ISS at Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield also went on strike in August. ISS outsources services like cleaning, catering, security and property maintenance.
In a dispute about overtime, operating theatre staff at Bedford Hospital and Luton and Dunstable University Hospital – all members of Unison – continue their strike action.
Theatre assistants at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, and theatre staff at Tameside Hospital and Northern Care Alliance, are also resuming their strike.
Earlier in the year pathology staff represented by Unite struck at Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals Trust, to protect overtime pay agreements as the trust attempted to move to a 24-hour shift system.