The UNISON National Labour Link Committee met on Monday 30 January to consider its response to the statements made by the Labour Party leadership about public sector pay restraint and cuts. It issued the following statement:
UNISON’s National Labour Link Committee members have been angered by the Party’s suggestion that public sector workers should face two more years of pay restraint - effectively pay cuts. Across the country, public service workers – the majority low paid women - have already endured real cuts to their living standards, attacks on their pensions, and face the daily threat of losing their jobs. The committee agreed to campaign within the Party to reverse the leadership’s decision to back these damaging pay policies.
Committee chair, Steve Warwick, said: “Everyone agrees that we must raise the issue of pay cuts at every level within the Labour Party. We must fight from within, and work with Councillors, MPs and CLPs to impress on the Party’s leadership how damaging the statements on public sector pay have been. We need the Labour Party to act like an opposition, and hold the government to account over damaging policies that are hitting the poorest, and most vulnerable, hardest.”
The committee agreed that UNISON will meet with other affiliated unions to discuss how Labour Party policy is made, so that members and affiliates can be properly listened to and involved in the future. To get ordinary members’ views heard within the Party, we will also encourage UNISON activists to get involved in CLPs and regions to speak up for public sector workers and their families. We will be diverting UNISON staff resources into making this happen.
UNISON is fiercely opposed to the government’s policy of pay restraint and cuts, and calls on the Labour Party leadership to give our members a reason to vote for the Party, by providing a real alternative to the coalition’s damaging cuts.
