Public Sector Workers Walk Out Across Yorkshire
30 November 2011, 11:40 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50
Schools, courts, transport and hospitals including Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust were hit by the biggest strike in decades as teachers, nurses and civil servants joined weather forecasters and nuclear physicists on picket lines.
Schools, courts, transport and hospitals including Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust were hit by the biggest strike in decades as teachers, nurses and civil servants joined weather forecasters and nuclear physicists on picket lines.
Unions said early indications were that the walkout was being solidly supported and predicted that November 30 would go down in history as the biggest day of industrial action since the 1979 Winter of Discontent.
On Wednesday the NHS is more or less operating as if it was a weekend or Bank Holiday. Emergency and trauma care will be the priority.
The Government in England estimates around 400,000 nurses and healthcare assistants, paramedics, physiotherapists and support staff like cleaners and administrators are joining the action.
Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust said 41 elective operations - 80% of the elective workload - had been cancelled and rescheduled.
Outpatient clinics have also been cancelled but emergency and trauma care will continue.
A spokeswoman said: ``Trust staff may be redeployed to cover other areas in order to maintain patient services.
``Any redeployment of trust staff will be commensurate with the skills of the employees concerned and staff will not be required to undertake roles which are above and beyond their levels of competence.''
A spokeswoman from Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Healthcare NHS Trust said no planned operations had been cancelled. She said appointments at the early pregnancy assessment unit had been rescheduled for Thursday.
She added: ``The full impact of the strike action will not be clear until it is under way, so it is possible that we may have no choice but to cancel some appointments and procedures on the day.''
