UNISON

On 20 July the government made awards in line with the NHS Pay Review Board’s recommendations. They are real-wage cuts which erode workers’ situation and do nothing to redress recent years of real-wage reduction or overcome the 10% vacancy rate in the NHS. The award increases the overall pay bill for workers under Agenda for Change (AfC: the big majority of directly-employed NHS workers) by an average of 4.8% across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, while prices are rising at 10% or more. It is also comes with an overall NHS budget set to allow only 3% rises . The award is a £1,400...

Ninety-four Higher Education (HE) branches in the public services union Unison are preparing to ballot to strike for a 2022-23 pay rise above inflation. The national offer is 3% while RPI is currently 9%. The ground for the ballot was prepared last year when nine branches struck against a below-inflation pay rise; 38 branches took part in the ballot in 2021-22. Although that was only a handful of branches, it showed that branches could get over the 50% ballot turnout threshold and it encouraged more branches to try this time. The ballot opens on 22 July and closes on 19 August in Scotland and...

The National Delegate Conference (NDC) of the public services union Unison (14-17 June) was, as we reported , dominated by attacks on the new left majority of the National Executive Committee (NEC). Yet both the NDC and Unison’s local government sector conference (12-13 June) also passed some useful — if sometimes vague — policies, which should given work for the left to organise around. There was also a mood or theme which (perhaps superficially) united all wings of Unison: the union must become “strike ready”. We are understandably cautious when a general secretary who has part of the union...

See also: "How to get real change in Unison" A rocky start for the new left-led National Executive Committee (NEC) elected for a two-year term in 2021 was expected at the national conference of the public services union Unison (14-17 June). The conference spent lots of time discussing and passing motions of no confidence. It reversed six decisions agreed by the NEC last year. It condemned the NEC for being unrepresentative with its presidential team (three members) and the seven chairs and seven vice-chairs of its sub-committees including no members from the Black workers’ self-organised group...

Last year the left in public services union Unison, mainly organised through the Time for Real Change grouping, won a majority of the national executive committee (NEC) of Britain's biggest union for the first time. At the 2022 conference (14-17 June, Brighton), however, the old right-wing leadership had a majority of delegates, and used it to viciously attack the left and constrict democracy in the union. We will report on the conference in detail soon. On 14 June Time for Real Change held a meeting attended by about three hundred delegates, and hearing from a range of Unison activists as...

The local government conference of the public services union Unison on 12-13 June was dominated by discussion on how to win ballots for strikes on pay. A ballot on the 1.75% pay offer for the year from April 2021, done between 5 December 2021 and 14 January 2022, fell flat with a turnout of only 14.5%. 50% minimum turnout is required for strike ballots in public services under the Trade Union Act 2016. For the year from April 2022, unions in local government (Unite and GMB as well as Unison) put in a claim on 6 June for £2,000 or RPI-matching increases (around 11%). A response from the...

Public services union Unison is holding its first physical national delegate conference since 2019 in Brighton 14-17 June. Before that the union's local government sector conference meets 12-13 June. • The bulletin our supporters will be distributing at the local government conference can be read here (double-sided). • The bulletin we'll be distributing at the national delegate conference can be read here (4 pages). See here and here for articles from our newspaper Solidarity previewing the issues at the conferences. We'll also be producing a bulletin on Ukraine. And we are supporting this...

A motion is going to the national conference of public services union Unison (Brighton, 14-17 June) to change its policy to supporting full decriminalisation of sex work and sex workers' fight to organise and assert their rights. The text is below; all motions to the conference here . (You can read the union's existing policy from 2010, supporting the "Nordic model", here .) As stated in our bulletin for the conference, Workers' Liberty strongly supports motion 55 and urges delegates to pass it. Check out the feminist/labour movement oriented campaign Decrim Now . And for some wider socialist...

The first face to face conference of the public services union Unison for three years meets in Brighton on 14-17 June. It is also the first since Unison’s first-ever election of a left National Executive Committee (NEC), the first since Covid hit, and the first since campaigns on 2021-2 pay went badly in Unison’s two biggest areas, local government and health. On 6 June the union, jointly with GMB and Unite, announced its pay claim for local government: the current rate of RPI inflation (presently 11.1%) or a minimum of £2,000. Downsides: the claim comes late, for a pay award that was due in...

Members in local government of the public services union Unison will meet in conference on 12-13 June, followed by the whole-union conference on 14-17 June. Conferences in 2020 were cancelled because of Covid curbs. There were special online conferences in 2021, but the motions and attendance were very limited. These are the first face-to-face national and local government conferences in two years, and the first since the left, mostly the Time for Real change faction, won the leadership of Unison’s National Executive Committee (NEC) in June 2021. There is a lot on the local government...