Around 1,000 healthcare assistants at North Tees & Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust and South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust will take strike action next week in a dispute over pay.

More than 1,000 healthcare assistants at North Tees & Hartlepool and South Tees Hospitals NHS foundation trusts will walk out for 72 hours, starting on 8 April.

Unison Northern regional secretary Clare Williams said: “Healthcare assistants provide outstanding care to people across Teesside and deserve to be fairly paid for the work they’ve done."

She added that hospitals across the UK have resolved pay issues through negotiation instead of resorting to strike action.

"It’s time these trusts followed suit," she said.

Although employers accept healthcare workers should be on a higher rate to recognise more complex duties, union Unison said the trusts must also improve an offer on the back pay staff deserve.

According to NHS guidance, healthcare assistants on salary band 2 of the NHS’s Agenda for Change pay scale should only be providing personal care, such as bathing and feeding patients.

Unison said, however, that most of the healthcare assistants have routinely undertaken clinical tasks that would normally be done by those on band 3, such as taking blood, performing electrocardiogram tests and inserting cannulas.