London NHS hospital security workers to strike in pay dispute

Staff
By Staff

Security workers at an NHS hospital are to launch a week-long strike in a dispute over pay. Members of Unite at London’s Guys and St Thomas’ hospitals will walk out from 7am on Monday for seven days, they announced today (Friday, March 15).

The union said the trust had declined to pay them a wage increase worth £2,000.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “The action of the trust is deplorable. These workers play a crucial frontline role, but are on poverty wages and are struggling to make ends meet.

“Unite always backs its members to the hilt and the workers at Guys and St Thomas’ have the union’s total backing in the escalation of strikes.”

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The latest wave of strikes follows two previous days of industrial action.

A security officer taking part in the strikes said: “Our security management got a pay increase last year, but our salary remains the same, despite our role becoming increasingly more dangerous.”

“We never quite know what we are going to get when we come into work and that is incredibly daunting. We deal with everything, from volatile patients to opening and unlocking various hospital departments.”

“It all comes with a great deal of risk, but that is ignored by the trust. We have simply had enough.”

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