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87 per cent of NHS staff in
favour of pay strike
In a few days' time UNISON members working in the
National Health Service will receive ballot papers for the consultation on the
Government's new pay offer.
UNISON says this is the best offer that can be achieved through negotiations,
and the Health Service Group Executive decided not to make a recommendation
either for or against the offer. However the publicity material produced so far
describes the offer repeatedly as "improved", offering "more help for the low
paid" and "the best offer that can be achieved through negotiation". Members
could be forgiven for thinking they are being encouraged to accept the offer.
Yet NHS workers are not convinced. A poll run by the Nursing Times this week
shows 87% voting to reject the revised offer - because it is still below the
rate of inflation and therefore a pay cut in real terms, and is still being paid
in stages in England. The net value of the new offer is a shade under 2.0% -
Gordon Brown's declared public sector pay limit, and a rate of increase
considered by UNISON's local government service group as a pay cut when they
announced the fact that the members in Local Government branches had
overwhelmingly rejected it. Even in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where
the offer will be paid in full and backdated from April 1st, it will still be
worth less than the rate of inflation.
Now we face the ludicrous situation of local government members being balloted
for industrial action to win a better pay rise than 2%, while members in the NHS
could end up accepting one not even worth that. For staff in pay bands 5 and
above, there's nothing in the new offer besides a grudging contribution to our
professional registration fees or a payment - to our employers, not to us - of
£25 towards training budgets. But why should our pay rise go to help the
employers restore their training budgets which they plundered last year when the
NHS financial crisis hit hard?
We know that winning a decent pay rise in the NHS is not going to be easy. But
it is not impossible, either. A lively campaign to reject the pay offer and
agree a strategy of industrial action (like that used so effectively recently by
the Irish Nurses Organisation and the Psychiatric Nurses
Association to win a cut in hours and a substantial pay rise over the next 18
months) could inspire health workers to join, and get active in, the unions.
Sooner or later, one union is going to wake up to the fact that NHS workers will
not put up with below inflation pay rises. The scepticism many of us encounter
from our colleagues is not a lack of interest, it is a lack of faith in the
unions' willingness to lead a serious struggle.
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What could this mean for our
NHS members?
The RCN has just announced the results of their
consultative ballot: 95% of members voting said they wanted to be balloted for
industrial action - unprecedented in the RCN's history. As UNISON members we
welcome this show of commitment on the part of RCN members but we remain
convinced that the only way industrial action will be effective is for it to be
taken across all grades and work groups in the NHS - and that means UNISON must
be organising it. We cannot let the RCN set the agenda on fighting this pay cut,
and we clearly cannot rely solely on the publicity being produced by UNISON at a
national level.
So we've created a website where we have been collecting information and
resources about the new pay offer - analysis of what the new offer would really
be worth, a discussion about what forms of industrial action might be effective
in the campaign, and a listing of branches which have declared one way or the
other on the pay offer. We hope this resource will help health workers get a
balanced picture of the revised pay offer, and also show them that there are
UNISON activists determined to organise a serious fight to win the pay rise we
all deserve.
The website is at
http://nhsworker.blogspot.com - we hope you find it useful. If you do,
please pass on the details to your friends and colleagues, whether they are
UNISON members or not. Please also pass on to us any information you think we
can share with others - details of your UNISON branch's recommendation on the
pay offer, for instance, or copies of any leaflets you are using locally to
explain the new offer to members. And if you agree with us, that the new offer
is simply not good enough, and want to add your name to our call for UNISON
members to reject it, please sign up to the statement you will find on the
website.
We can win a decent pay rise in the NHS this year, but we have to reject this
offer first!
Have your say on NHS pay
Arrangements for the ballot of all UNISON's 460,000 members working in the NHS
on the new pay offer are now well under way and UNISON will indicate you accept
the new deal, but that's a matter of conscience.
Ballot papers despatched on 20 August. Included
with the ballot paper will be a letter from Dave Prentis, our general secretary,
and a briefing document containing the improved offer.
Download the briefing flyer:
 Acrobat
PDF version
Download draft 2007 pay scales:
Acrobat
PDF version
Source: nhs worker
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