NHS strikes: Leeds paramedics at Yorkshire Ambulance Service vote on strike action

The workers, including paramedics and emergency call handlers in Leeds, say they are angry over the four per cent NHS Agenda for Change pay award, which was imposed last month. The award is lower than the real rate of inflation, RPI, which stands at 12.6 per cent.

Trade union Unite said 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) and ends on November 30.

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, their 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 Yorkshire Ambulance Service voted overwhelmingly to strike. Nearly all said that the pay award announced by the UK government back in July 2022 was unfair.

Unite regional officer Pat Pepper said: “The anger amongst our Yorkshire 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.”

Unite members will be balloted in phases for industrial action over pay across Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We value the hard work of NHS staff and are working hard to support them – including by giving over one million NHS workers a pay rise of at least £1,400 this year.

“Industrial action is a matter for unions, and we urge them to carefully consider the potential impacts on patients.”