Doncaster Hospital workers on strike for £9,000 back pay

Skilled maintenance workers at the Doncaster and Bassetlaw hospitals trust were on strike on 19 November in a row over pay.

The trust has reneged on a national agreement to pay a recruitment and retention allowance to these workers, which is worth £3,000 a year. The workers are owed £9,000 in back pay.

The allowances were agreed as part of the national pay and grading scheme for the NHS, Agenda for Change.

Unite, the workers' union have already won a tribunal case where a hospital trust in Newcastle refused to pay the allowance to four workers. And in June a threatened strike of hospital workers in Northern Ireland forced the Department of Health to pay the premium.