MEDICAL secretaries who provide vital support to Bury's top hospital doctors are to take industrial action in protest at their working conditions.

A leaked memo to the Bury Times revealed that the team of medical secretaries with Bury Health Care NHS Trust are to follow a "work to rule" policy, which will ban essential overtime.

The document, which has been sent to all consultants within the Trust, states that their action centres on the recruitment of support staff and re-grading of medical secretaries to Grade 4.

The memo reads: "This is the first step and hopefully the only one required to demonstrate to management our determination to continue our fight for long overdue re-grading and re-structuring, as has already happened in many other NHS Trusts, including Rochdale and Oldham." It concludes: "Obviously we are very unhappy at having to resort to this action, but we feel that management has for too long relied on the goodwill and conscientiousness of the medical secretariat."

One medical secretary, who didn't want to be named, said: "Morale among support staff is very low. The Bury Trust pays one of the lowest rates in the region. Several years ago when Trusts first started reviewing grades, Bury was one of the last to adopt the new scales.

"At the same time we have a number of vacant posts which the Trust is having difficulty filling." She said that the turnover of support staff was increasing as similar, better paid positions could be found elsewhere, which was in turn placing extra burden on other employees.

Negotiations to improve working conditions, which started last October, were described by the medical secretaries as "fruitless".

Although she admitted that the course of action would have a knock-on effect on consultants, she said that the medical secretaries were left with no other option but to take this "necessary step".

"We all work extremely hard as a team. We will come in early and finish late to help the doctors," she added. "We are not doing anything underhanded, we will simply work within our contractual agreements, which we are perfectly entitled to do."

She concluded: "No decision on other courses of action will be taken without further meetings."

A spokesman for Bury Health Care NHS Trust admitted that they were experiencing difficulties in recruiting, but added: "The Trust is continuing discussions with medical secretaries and working to resolve the pressures on the service."