UNISON

The public services union

NHS Pensions: Reject the proposals! Fight for our pension rights!

Crucial proposals affecting all NHS workers have once again appeared during the summer holidays, and once again the NHS unions have signed up to give away some of our rights, on proposals that are still only half-written. This time it is pensions. The “final proposals” for the NHS pension scheme have appeared this month, and they spell bad news for both current and future NHS workers. Most current health workers will be forced to pay an additional half percent of their wages into the scheme in order to safeguard our right to retire on a full pension at 60 – a flagrant breach of UNISON's policy...

NHS Logistics: strike to stop privatisation!

Government ministers showed contempt for NHS Logistics workers this week by choosing to announce the signing of a deal to outsource or privatise the agency to the corporate giant DHL in the week that UNISON members within NHS Logistics are voting over strike action against the proposal. With only a few days left before the UNISON ballot for industrial action closes, all NHS Logistics workers should be making sure their colleagues have voted YES to action. All the signs are that there will be a big turn-out and a strong vote in favour of industrial action, but the Government are clearly intent...

NHS news round-up

Derbyshire Victory. One success in the battle against privatisation has been the widely reported victory by the community of Langwith in Derbyshire against the award of a local GP contract to United Heath Care. The local Primary Care Trust was found to have been guilty at the court of Appeal of not consulting local people about the tendering process and how the contract would be awarded. This is a great victory for the principle that as a public service the NHS should be publically accountable. New Labour have done their best to create a situation where such an obligation is at best only a...

Campaign to save the NHS

NHS Logistics: strike ballot against privatisation Vote Yes to strike action and say no to profit from care After some months of delay Unison has finally decided to go ahead with a ballot for industrial action over the proposed privatisation of NHS Logistics. Set up in 2000, NHS Logistics provides the health service in England with a huge range of critical products - from food to needles and syringes, beds and dressings. Over the last few years it has won a number of awards for excellence and quality of service as well as putting money back into the NHS through efficiency and other savings...

Strike action the answer on pensions

Over a million people struck to defend pensions on March 28th. Across the country successful pickets and demonstrations showed the potential of union power.
In Nottingham over 1,000 marched through the streets to a rally in the city. Schools, libraries, museums, car parks, refuse collection and much...

Pay, pensions, privatisation

By a conference delegate Unison conference, meeting in Bournemouth between 17 and 23 June, posed both problems and possibilities for serious class-struggle activists in the union. At the Local Government sector conference, there was a defeat for the left when the conference voted not to restart industrial action over pensions. By just over 350,000 to just over 330,000, delegates voted against a motion rejecting the leadership’s strategy of relying on a judicial review of the government’s pension plans. Speaking on the Tuesday of conference, general secretary Dave Prentice promised that if...

Public sector union meets - Time to fight the NHS cuts

By a Unison member At the conference for health workers in Unison back in April, delegates voted for a vibrant national campaign against the cuts in the NHS. The lumbering machinery of the union is now slowly starting to move. It supported the 11 May lobby of parliament, originally called by the Royal College of Nursing and there is now some mention of a national campaign on Unison’s website! More hopeful are the moves within the regions of Unison to establish some local a nationwide petition and some encouragement to branches to investigate possibilities of local action. But the more militant...

Unions continue pensions battle

rail On Tuesday 6 June the rail unions RMT and TSSA will report the results of their ballots for industrial action over pensions. Their demands, covering all railworkers outside the London Underground, are for pensions to be maintained, worker contributions limited to 10.56%, the Railway Pension Scheme to be open to all railworkers, and the Scheme to be simplified into three sections in place of the over 100 sections which have proliferated since privatisation. Unlike other public service unions, the rail unions are clear in rejecting any “two-tier” deal which would protect existing workers at...

Local government pensions: We must re-start the fight!

By a UNISON member Members of the local government trade unions are confused and demoralised by the continued failure of their unions to organise further action in support of their fight over pensions. There are growing signs that the union leaders are looking for a way out of the dispute, which could leave all future council workers, and many current staff, with poorer pensions, and the good work done to rebuild some trade union organisation in the run-up to the strike in March completely undermined. The unions called off further action after a largely successful one-day strike on March 28th...

Migrant Voices play - 8 June - Newcastle - FREE

Please forward to anyone who may be interested:

FREE theatre performance, Banner Theatre company's
MIGRANT VOICES - Thurs 8 June - 7pm
Moorside School, Beaconsfield St, Arthurs Hill, Newcastle

Hosted by Newcastle City Unison

More info contact:

Migrant Voices: Touring in 2006

Migrant...

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