Preston and Chorley hospitals' path lab staff offered strike vote over pay

The Post can reveal that the Unite union is holding a consultative ballot of 18 of its members who work for Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

The dispute centres on the wage band that they are entitled to once they are deemed qualified to work unsupervised. Staff in the chemistry and haematology laboratories have so far been balloted.

It is understood that while the two groups are not involved in the analysis of Covid swabs that go through the NHS ‘pillar 1’ testing process to find out if somebody within the health service has coronavirus, they do have a role in analysing other samples from the sickest Covid patients who end up in hospital.

Unite North West regional officer Keith Hutson said that the pay issue dates back to before the pandemic and that the union put the prospect of strike action on hold as coronavirus began to spread.

However, he claims that his members have since been treated “appallingly” – and so the union has restarted the balloting process.

“The foot soldiers in biomedical come in at [pay] band five – and within one to two years they have to be trained up to become a band six.

“The contract states that once you work autonomously, you have to be paid at band six, because you make your own decisions and are responsible for your own work.

“We define autonomous by if someone is working at night, on their own – because they can’t be anything else [in that situation].

“But several trusts, including Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, train these people up, but then find excuses not to pay them at [the higher band],” Mr. Huston said.

The results of the consultative ballot are due before the end of the month and will determine whether a second poll will be held to authorise some form of strike action.

A spokesperson for Lancashire Teaching Hospitals said that trust had “not received any formal notification that the union is balloting staff”

They added: “The pay issue identified is currently being explored in line with our grievance procedure and, should we receive notification of industrial action ballot, we will try to ensure, as much as possible, that service delivery is not affected.”