Staff at a medical warehouse which works with major community pharmacy suppliers have today begun industrial action over trade union recognition issues.

Members of the union Unite at Movianto in Bedford, which offers temperature-controlled warehousing to pharmaceutical supply chains including Alliance Healthcare UK and Phoenix, are staging a walkout which is set to last until 11:59 pm on Friday.

Unite regional officer Richard Gates told The Pharmacist that the union represents over 60% of the bargaining group of hourly paid workers at the Bedford warehouse, who are involved in picking and distributing products.

But The Pharmacist understands that Alliance Healthcare UK has been assured by Movianto that the company had fully militated for the industrial action and that its service would not be impacted.

And Phoenix said that it would continue to work with Movianto to ensure continuity of supplies from their depots.

The Healthcare Distribution Association (HDA), which represents pharmaceutical wholesalers, said that as of 2.30pm today, it had not heard of any disruptions to supply to its wholesale member companies from pre-wholesaler Movianto, which is not an HDA member.

‘HDA will monitor the situation closely and keep the Department of Health informed, as is normal practice, if there are any threats to ongoing supply to community pharmacy,’ said HDA chief executive Martin Sawer.

The dispute revolves around trade union recognition rather than pay.

In a statement released last week, Unite said that Movianto had refused to recognise the union for collective bargaining purposes.

It said that over 85 Unite members had been campaigning for their union to be officially recognised but this was ‘strongly resisted’ by Movianto.

Nearly 80% of Unite members at the company then voted in favour of industrial action, which Unite said was likely to cause ‘significant disruption’ to the medical centres supplied by Movianto.

Unite regional officer Mr Gates told The Pharmacist: ‘Unite doesn’t like to cause disruption for the general public, [for] patients [or] anybody. But when we are forced into a corner [where industrial action is] the only thing the employer will listen to, then we have to take drastic action. It’s always a last resort.

‘The best way all round to resolve this is for Movianto to either formally recognise Unite, so that we can start electing reps and get a recognition agreement, or at the very least show serious intentions to meet with me to discuss [going] down this road, and then we can call off the strikes and get everyone back to work.’

In a statement released today, Paul Wilkinson, president of Movianto UK, said that the company acknowledges the rights of its teammates to take collective action, but added that it believes that this action is unsupported by the majority of those working at the Bedford site, since today’s strike involved 55 of the site’s total 350 employees.

And he said that Movianto had today been able to continue delivering medicines ‘without any significant disruptions’.

Mr Wilkinson added that Movianto was ‘dedicated to resolving the issues at hand through open dialogue and constructive engagement’.

Amid junior doctor strikes last week, the chief pharmaceutical officer (CPhO) for England warned that pharmacy teams will experience challenging circumstances over the coming weeks and months, due to high demand, staff shortages, sickness and industrial action.