Pay, hours, conditions

The backdrop to the health sector conference, 8-10 April, of the public services union Unison, was an NHS increasingly in crisis. Staff shortages, unsafe staff levels, low pay, privatisation and the impact on people who work in health, dominated all of the debates. Conference celebrated and applauded all of those who had struck over this year. But a plan of detailed action over this year’s pay was missing. A pay consultation email was sent out to all health members in England the week before conference but union branches didn’t know it was happening, and so it wasn’t accompanied by any local...

Six hundred NHS Clinical Support Workers (CSWs) on the Wirral have won their long-running dispute for rebanding and back pay. The workers, who are Unison members employed at Arrowe Park and Clatterbridge hospitals, have been striking since August 2023. Their demands were to be rebanded from band 2 to band 3 on the Agenda for Change NHS pay scale, as they were routinely undertaking clinical tasks such as taking and monitoring blood, performing electrocardiogram tests and inserting cannulas; and for that improved rate to be backdated to 2018. Seven health trusts in the North West moved workers...

Drivers for Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Just Eat have announced strikes every Friday and bank holiday over pay. This comes after two successful strikes in February. The demand of the strike is £5 minimum for each order. Because food couriers are designated as “self-employed” they have no guaranteed basic pay, getting variable fees for each delivery. They also don’t have automatic rights to sick pay, holiday pay, pensions or parental leave. A recent report looked at pay in the sector and found most platforms couldn’t provide evidence that workers’ pay was minimum wage after costs. Delivery Job UK...

The Left Unity leadership (LU) of the PCS civil service union is conducting a “survey”, over just two weeks, to gauge membership support for its 2024-25 pay demands and for strike action. LU failed to consult branches about the demands, sprang the survey on them without providing campaign materials, and has not given them time to campaign effectively for members’ support. The survey was issued to members on 20 February on a non “https” secure server. Some members expressed security concern for the handling of their data and this has meant they have not completed the survey. Some members have...

Academic research commissioned by the civil service union PCS has concluded: “... UK Civil Service wages have dramatically eroded in real terms due to persistent below-inflation pay rises. Depending on the inflation indicator used, at best, real wages in 2023 were at where they were two decades ago... Since 2010, median annual pay has fallen between 15 and 38% in the civil service, depending on the grade and inflation indicator.” The Tories have no intention of seriously addressing either this deliberate reduction in real pay or the endemic low pay in the civil service and may be preparing to...

Junior doctors in England will strike again for five days from 24 to 28 February, the tenth round of strikes in their fight for “pay restoration” — a real-terms pay rise and clear timetable to restore the real value of their pay to its 2008 level. As Solidarity went to press, junior doctors in Wales were due to strike 21-24 February. Junior doctors in Northern Ireland will strike, for the first time in this dispute, 6-7 March. The British Medical Association (BMA) is reballoting its junior doctor members in England to extend its legal strike mandate under the anti-trade union laws for another...

Following Northern Ireland’s huge public sector strike on 18 January over pay, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has said that “industrial action will continue” until an offer is made “that workers can accept.” Pay awards for public sector workers have not been made since the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) collapsed the devolved government in October 2022, in protest against post-Brexit trading arrangements. The Northern Ireland (NI) Assembly and Executive were restored on 3 February, with public sector pay placed high on the agenda of incoming ministers. ICTU’s comments came after a meeting...

Workers at Amazon’s BHX4 facility in Coventry will strike again on 13-15 February. Their campaign of strikes to win a £15/hour minimum wage has now seen them take over 30 days of action. The GMB union’s membership at the warehouse now stands at over 1,000. The strike comes after union members recently voted to renew their industrial action mandate for a further six months. Amazon has upped its anti-union efforts, distributing leaflets within the workplace saying the GMB wants to speak “for” workers whereas Amazon wants to speak “to” them: “You don’t have to join a union to have your voice...

British Medical Association junior doctors in England fighting for “pay restoration” — a real-terms wage rise this year, and a clear plan to restore their pay to the real-terms level of 2008 — will strike again for five days this month, from the morning of Saturday 24 February to Wednesday 28 February. Other trade unionists, activists, and everyone who supports workers’ rights and the NHS should join their picket lines and demonstrations, and push for active solidarity from our unions and organisations. When their current legal mandate for strikes under the anti-trade-union laws expires at the...

An estimated 150,000 workers took part in 24 hours strike in the North of Ireland on 18 January, including nurses, teachers, bus drivers, carers, cleaners and civil servants from 16 unions. Their core demand was aimed at the British government: to release the £0.6m for public sector pay uplifts which it is holding back as a gambit to pressure the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to end its boycott of Stormont. The party collapsed the Northern Ireland power-sharing regime in February 2022 in protest against the Northern Ireland Protocol. Around 10,000 joined a rally in Belfast, with...