STAFF at the Royal Derby Hospital are staging a four-hour walkout strike over pay today.
Unison members working for the NHS are carrying out a four-hour stoppage between 7am and 11am – for the first time in 32 years.
Members have also voted in favour of four days of other industrial action, short of striking, from tomorrow to Friday.
Unison said there were due to be picket lines at London Road Community Hospital and the Royal Derby Hospital today.
Helen Elson, 51, a medical secretary from Burton, was one of dozens of workers on the picket line, she said: "The government needs to realise that it can't keep giving us under inflation pay rises.
"We have got all sorts of people working at the Royal Derby Hospital, like single parent families and split up families and this is having a huge impact on how they live.
"The cost of rent, mortgages, and living in general is going up and this is what we are trying to get across.
"I am not a political person but the government seems to be able to help those who are quite poor and those who are richer but not those in the middle, they have no help."
Dawn Cox, a senior registered nurse for the intensive care unit joined the picket line after finishing her night shift, she said: "The cost of living is going up and money at the petrol stations and the supermarkets is just not going as far.
"At the same time with pension contributions and national insurance contributions having increased it is starting to make a difference to the money left to be spent on other things."
