MORE than 400,000 NHS workers are set to be balloted for strike action over plummeting take-home pay, their union has announced, as the biggest strike wave to sweep Britain since the 1980s continues to grow.

Health union Unison said that its members — ranging from nursing staff and ambulance crews to hospital porters and cleaners — will start voting across England, Wales and Northern Ireland on October 27.

Nurses, midwives, ambulance crews and physiotherapists represented by Unite, GMB and the Royal College of Nursing are also being consulted following more than a decade of Tory austerity wages and the creeping privatisation of services.