Five-day strike to hit Mid Yorkshire Hospitals Trust after offer rejected

Admin and clerical staff at Mid Yorkshire Hospitals Trust will walk out in protest at plans to impose pay cuts of up to £2,800-a-year.

Bosses at cash-strapped Mid Yorkshire, which runs Pinderfields, Pontefract and Dewsbury hospitals, want to downgrade the salaries of staff including medical secretaries and receptionists to help save £24m.

Unions say the plans unfairly target low paid and mainly female members of staff, and have already staged four days of strike action.

Now notice has been served of a further five-day strike from midnight on Sunday.

Jim Bell, regional organiser for Unison, said: “This is a significant escalation of the action from our perspective. We expected around 500 people to be on strike during the week.”

Trust bosses offered a deal to increase the period staff would be protected from the pay cuts from a year to 18 months and give them six months pay protection in a lump sum.

But Mr Bell said Mid Yorkshire had already cut pay protection from three years to a year before proposing the current downbanding of salaries.

He added: “It’s a cynical move by them.”

Graham Briggs, Mid Yorkshire’s director of HR, said the trust remained open to meaningful discussions to resolve the dispute.

He said: “We must reduce our costs and in particular our pay bill and it is disappointing that our continued attempts to work with union representatives to find a mutually agreeable solution for the trust and the members they represent continue to be rejected.”