13 August 2025

Gloucestershire phlebotomists parading at the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival, Dorset. 20 July 2025. Photo Workers.
Phlebotomists in Gloucestershire, members of Unison, are continuing their months-long dispute over pay and grading. The Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has refused to accept that they are underpaid, leading to strike action.
Earlier this year the thirty seven phlebotomists employed by the trust to take blood samples from patients realised that they were being paid at the wrong grade. They made a formal request for their pay to be corrected, an increase of 77 pence an hour.
Shut down
An NHS job evaluation panel started to carry out a review. But before its decision was announced, senior managers suddenly shut it down.
Incorrect grading is a common issue in the NHS. Resolving these claims is the key aim of Unison’s “pay fair for patient care” campaign. Since 2021, more than 40,000 healthcare workers have received around £162 million in back pay and more than £64 million in salary increases.
Unwilling
Not surprisingly the response of Gloucestershire management led to strike action which began in March initially for three days but increasing in length and is continuous since 21 April. Currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Trust, Kevin McNamara who is paid over £300,000 a year, is unwilling to meet the phlebotomists.
Unison head of Health Helga Pile said, “NHS trusts up and down the country are doing the right thing by paying their staff properly for the work they do and giving them compensation for when they weren’t on the correct rate.”
Pile explained that the Gloucestershire phlebotomists don’t want special treatment but want to be paid correctly for the valuable jobs they do. She said, “Their patients know how important they are – it’s time the trust recognised this too.”