NHS workers protest in cities across the UK to demand higher wages
NHS workers have marched in cities across the UK to demand higher wages after they were excluded from a pay increase for around 900,000 public sector workers.
Some health workers will not receive the pay bump announced a couple of weeks ago because they are in the final year of a three-year pay deal.
Instead, they are due a pay rise next April, but unions want the government to show its appreciation for NHS staff by bringing it forward to this year.
Doctors and dentists were the only NHS employees who benefited from the announcement from chancellor Rishi Sunak.
It has prompted a wave of 37 socially distanced protests across England, Scotland and Wales which all started at 11am on Saturday.
One of the health workers, Laura Duffell, told Yahoo News UK on Friday that NHS staff feel they have been “stabbed in the back” after months on the frontline during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She said: “I don’t think the government has appreciated the sacrifices people have made.”
Duffell is a matron at the trauma centre of a central London hospital.
It was three times over its intensive care capacity at the peak of the outbreak.
Duffell is helping to organise the London protest, which will see workers march on Downing Street.
More than 500 health workers have died so far following exposure to coronavirus.
The NHS staff are staging socially-distanced protests to demand the government recognises their role in the coronavirus fight.
Protesters gathered in St James’s Park and on Horse Guards Parade in central London ahead of their demonstration in the capital.
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