RADIOGRAPHERS and sonographers in Dorset have staged a half-day strike over a rejected pay rise.

Staff stood on the picket line for four hours outside Dorset County Hospital after the government decided not to award all NHS staff a one per cent pay increase.

Simon Clarke, industrial relations representative for the Society of Radiographers, said that the staff out on strike received a positive reaction.

He said: “Striking health professionals were greeted by dozens of tooting horns and cheers from passing cars.

“Passersby, many of them entering or leaving the hospital, chatted and offered their support.”

Other members of the Society of Radiographers across the UK also took part in industrial action.

Radiographers and sonographers are the latest group of NHS staff to strike following action last week by other health workers.

Mr Clarke added: “It can be difficult for the public to understand how much NHS wages have dropped over the last four years, with the cost of living rising all the time, but NHS workers are not getting pay rises and are having to pay more for their pensions – because the government spin is in full force.

“They don’t have ‘Golden Pensions’ and don’t all get automatic rises every year as Jeremy Hunt would have the public believe. All NHS staff start at a reduced rate of pay for the position they take, and every year they receive a performance appraisal requiring them to show their experience and expertise has improved over the last 12 months.

“Then, and only then, will they get an increment. This continues for several years until the staff member has reached the set job rate, and then the increments stop.

“The only way to continue getting increments is by applying for promotional jobs, which are increasingly scarce nowadays.

“Health workers can’t walk out en mass and close the service, as can happen with, for example, tube train drivers or air traffic controllers. We have to provide care 24/7.

“It’s the health professionals’ dedication to not making patients suffer that enables David Cameron to say such strikes have ‘little impact’.”