The Labour government has announced it will impose the below-inflation, 3.3% pay increase on NHS workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, as recommended by the widely discredited NHS Pay Review Body (PRB).
Len Hockey, Unite branch secretary at Barts Health Trust, standing for election to Unite Executive Council, says:
Labour’s imposed 3.3% pay ‘deal’ will further anger overworked health workers. With the RPI rate of inflation standing at 4.2%, the pay increase amounts to a substantial real-terms pay cut.
Nearly all the unions have boycotted the review body, including my union. Allegedly independent ‘experts’, it has delivered real-terms pay cuts over years, with parameters set by government, including its ‘financial envelope’.
As Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “It beggars belief that a Labour government should seek to ride roughshod over the health unions when deciding on NHS pay.’’
Pay is also being cut by some trusts by other means, including down-banding and fire and rehire. Intertwined are the policies of both pay erosion and involvement of for-profit organisations in our NHS. By continually cheapening, debasing and devaluing the workforce, burgeoning privatisation is increasing at scale.
The response from all health unions must be immediate. That must mean coordinated sustained strike action.
Local, regional and national rallies should be organised, with reps’ meetings in constituent unions called, and joint union meetings at all levels: in hospitals, districts and regions, and nationally.
Rumours at possible attempts to divide medical staff from the wider workforce, if true, need to be met with unified action and called out for what they are: attempts at divide and rule.
The actions by Labour, including the Mandelson scandal, give added urgency to the review of Unite’s relationship with pro-capitalist Labour agreed at the July 2025 national conference. We cannot wait till 2027. Unite should call an emergency rules conference and end affiliation to the party. We need our funds used only to support council and parliamentary candidates, including health workers, that stand for our union’s policies.
Adrian O’Malley, Yorkshire and Humberside, standing for re-election to Unison Health Service Group Executive, says (in a personal capacity):
After inviting the trade unions to talks over a possible multi-year pay deal and much-needed pay structure improvements for Bands 2 to 5 before Christmas, the Labour government has backtracked and followed the PRB recommendation. It was clearly playing with the staff while preparing to impose yet another below-inflation pay rise. Unison and the other main NHS unions, the Royal College of Nursing, Unite and GMB, all have policies for direct negotiations over pay with the government instead of the PRB, as is the case in Scotland.
Helga Pile, Unison head of health, said: “Hard-pressed NHS staff will be downright angry at another below-inflation pay rise.”
NHS workers’ anger, after two decades of pay austerity, is totally justified. But the decision Unison and the NHS unions have to make is what do we do about it? How do we turn that anger into action?
By taking strong and consistent strike action, the resident doctors have won higher pay increases and direct negotiations with the NHS bosses over pay, terms and conditions. This despite the constant vilification by Labour health secretary Wes Streeting, Keir Starmer and the billionaire media.
The NHS unions must lodge a national dispute immediately. We must prepare the ground for coordinated strike action as early as possible to coincide with the imposition of this insulting award.
The continuation of the Tories’ austerity pay policy can be beaten by a united NHS workforce acting in solidarity together. This weak and rotten Labour government, continuing Tory austerity, cannot be trusted by NHS workers. They have made U-turn after U-turn after imposing anti-working class policies. We can force another U-turn by standing together and delivering coordinated strike action across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
