Theatre assistants strike in Leeds

The strike by theatre assistants at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is a reminder of a basic socialist truth: workers create the wealth, workers run the services, and workers have the power to stop them running. The NHS depends not on trust executives or government ministers, but on the collective labour of the people who keep hospitals functioning every day.

The workers on strike are among the lowest paid in the NHS. Yet they carry out vital responsibilities in operating theatres, supporting clinical teams, assisting with specialist equipment, helping reduce infection risks and caring for patients. Unison argues that these duties should be recognised at Band 3 rather than Band 2 and points out that more than 100 NHS trusts and health boards have already agreed similar regrading and back-pay settlements.

What stands out about this dispute is not simply the injustice, but the response. Instead of accepting management's decisions, workers have organised. They have built picket lines, taken strike action and refused to be ignored. On 30 July they marched on the trust board, bringing their demands directly to those attempting to deny them fair pay.

Too often workers are told that change comes through patience, partnership and waiting for those at the top to do the right thing. The Leeds theatre assistants are demonstrating a different approach. Every significant gain won by working-class people has been secured through collective struggle. Rights are not gifts from employers. They are won when workers organise and fight for them.

That is why this dispute matters beyond Leeds. Every healthcare assistant, porter, cleaner, administrator and support worker whose labour is undervalued has a stake in its outcome. A victory for the theatre assistants would send a message across the NHS that workers do not have to accept being permanently underpaid for the work they perform.

The solidarity shown by trade unionists across Yorkshire, has been an important expression of that understanding. The labour movement is strongest when workers see their struggles as connected. The dispute at Leeds is not an isolated grievance. It is part of a wider fight against low pay, outsourcing, understaffing and managerial control throughout the public sector.

For socialists, the lesson is clear. Workers do not discover their power by listening to speeches. They discover it through action. Every successful picket line, every workplace meeting and every demonstration builds confidence, organisation and class consciousness. The theatre assistants are showing what that looks like in practice.

Their demand is straightforward and entirely justified:

Band 3 work deserves Band 3 pay.

But their struggle points towards something bigger: a labour movement prepared to fight, prepared to organise and prepared to rely on its own strength.

Victory to the Leeds theatre assistants. An injury to one is an injury to all.