'It’s time Britain had a pay rise' the Tory Prime Minister told the British Chambers of Commerce on Tuesday. But Tory Ministers were quick to point out that Cameron's Damascene conversion to fairness at work does not apply to public sector workers. Within hours of his Leader's speech, Business Minister Matthew Hancock told Radio 4's the World at One that 'we've got to make sure we keep a tight constraint on public sector pay' and then later on the same day popped on Newsnight to shamelessly make the point that 'public sector productivity has gone up pretty sharply in the past 5 years'.
It's about time UNISON made mincemeat of these contradictory and divisive attacks on our members now that wages are centre stage in the political debate. As Simon Jenkins stated in the Guardian: 'If he had the courage of his economic conviction, Cameron would do the same for the public sector. He can hand out bonuses to welfare recipients and state workers without bruising his deficit reduction strategy. He can print them. He found £375bn overnight to give the banks with no risk of inflation. He can do it again'
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/10/david-cameron-britain-pay-rise-cough-up-public-sector-welfare
3.5m (1 in 4) children in the UK live in poverty yet remarkably Labour has committed to a two year freeze in child benefit if it forms a Government next May. Do such reactionary policies have electoral consequences? An article in the Fabian Review suggests that 'between 2005 and 2014 Labour has seen dwindling support from a wide range of blue-collar working demographic groups'. The recent Heywood by-election highlighted the threat posed by UKIP in Labour's electoral heartlands. Labour's best antidote to UKIP's politics of despair and xenophobia is to give working people hope that their lives will improve for the better with a change of government - by pledging to end the public sector pay freeze, improve front line services such as home care and to halt the rolling back of the welfare state (including a rethink of the disgusting proposal to freeze child benefit).
http://www.fabians.org.uk/labours-weakening-hold-on-blue-collar-workers/
#NHSpay UNISON branches and regions are campaigning today to highlight the impact of five years of pay freezes and pay caps on NHS workers - most of whom are now at least 10% worse off than when the Con Dem government came to power in 2010. An online TUC petition can be signed and circulated to build momentum in the campaign against this week's imposition of a 1% rise (itself wholly inadequate) for a minority of NHS workers and 0% for the hundreds of thousands of NHS workers who receive a contractual pay increment this year and next year. There will never be a clearer basis for a trade dispute in the NHS and the sooner the better that all health unions ballot for coordinated industrial action to oppose this unprecedented attack on the NHS workforce:
https://secure.goingtowork.org.uk/page/signup/george-osborne-lift-the-nhs-pay-cap-Fair-Pay-Fortnight
Whatever the NHS Pay Review Body (PRB) announced yesterday, it was unlikely to be enough to maintain the living standards of NHS workers in the face of the huge cost of living crisis. A 1% increase leaves pay well behind inflation, saps the spending power of these workers and leaves NHS staff still picking up the bill once again of a crisis not of our making. But Hunt’s kick in the teeth for NHS staff in reneging on the PRB recommendations has damaging consequences.
The Big Lie technique has worked wonders for the Con Dem's since 2010 - softening up public opinion for cuts in public services with a dishonest narrative that Britain has been living beyond its means because of profligate Labour public spending. Now laughably they claim that most British workers have seen their take-home pay rise in real terms in the past year. Millions of public sector workers whose pay settlements have been held down at 0% - 1% will this morning have woken up in disbelief at claims that earnings are raising at 2.5% or more. Not to mention the 2011 rise in VAT from 17.5% to 20% as well as cuts in council tax benefit and tax credits which have squeezed millions of low income workers. At national level unions have a responsibility to deal head on with this Tory offensive, today and every day until workers in Britain get the real increases in pay necessary to restore and improve living standards.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25869001
Research by the
New Economics Foundation (NEF) think-tank, commissioned by UNISON, is the latest in a long line of reports to identify that ‘workers on low and middle incomes are experiencing the biggest decline in their living standards since reliable records began in the mid-19th century.’
The NEF sets out 6 excellent recommendations (below) for government and other policy makers to adopt. However it should be added to the mix that union agency in collective bargaining, including the effective and smart use of strike tactics, will be critical to realising pay justice for workers who provide public services in the UK:
Yesterday it was announced that the higher education unions, UCU, UNISON and Unite, will stage a second day of national strike action on 3 December in support of a pay claim which ‘at least matches the rate of inflation’ (RPI currently stands at 2.6%). The cash rich University employers have offered a derisory 1%. Support came from an unexpected quarter yesterday. The Independent reports that New Labour social mobility Tsar Alan Milburn said Labour’s pledge to freeze energy prices and the Coalition’s proposal to create more competition in the industry would not solve the fundamental problem in the economy – that wages have stagnated. “The cost of living crisis is as much a problem of falling earnings as it is of rising price”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/economic-success-could-be-social-failure-unless-it-raises-earnings-and-living-standards-for-ordinary-people-says-alan-milburn-8937755.html
Industrial action ballots in UCU, UNISON and Unite have all resulted in votes for strike action in higher education following the overwhelming rejection of a 1% pay offer from University employers. UNISON's HE service group executive meeting on Monday endorsed strike action and, following approval by the NEC's Industrial Action Committee, it has been confirmed that a united day of strike action will be held on Thursday 31 October 2013:
https://www.unison.org.uk/news/university-strike-date-announced
#njcpay2014 Local government NJC Unions unanimously agreed the 2014/15 pay claim yesterday (for submission to the employers next week) and will be seeking a minimum increase of £1 an hour on scale point 5 to achieve the living wage and the same flat rate increase on all other scale points. If cross party support for the living wage principle is to have any meaning and the joint union commitment to ending low pay in local government is to have any credibility then 2014 must be the year when an increase in excess of the 1% Con Dem pay cap is secured.
Yesterday UNISON announced the result of a UK wide industrial action ballot in higher education (HE) and 54.4% of members voted in favour of taking strike action against the 1% pay offer for 2013/14 from the employers' representatives UCEA. The service group executive will meet next Monday to consider next steps in the pay campaign with the ballot result of the UCU lecturers (which closes on 10 October) likely to be influential in the discussion. Last year UNISON members voted for action by a smaller majority (50.3%) but the UCU ballot went down.
http://www.unison.org.uk/news/higher-education-ballot-result
The NJC committee met this morning and the outcome of consultation on the 1% offer was a 59% to 41% majority to accept. So in a week when a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) claimed that wages have fallen more in real terms during the current economic downturn than ever before, the 3 local government unions (GMB, UNISON and Unite) will be signing up to a further erosion in real pay levels for hundreds of thousands of local government workers.
http://www.ifs.org.uk/pr/fs_june2013_launch_pr.pdf
Yesterday's Budget should have dispelled any lingering doubts about the importance of the current local government pay disputes in the
National Joint Council (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) and the
Scottish Joint Council. New questions arise too about the future of (supposedly impartial) Pay Review Bodies given Chancellor Osborne's certitude that they will deliver his 1% pay restraint up to 2016. Alice Hood of the TUC provides a useful analysis of Government pay policy following the Budget announcement - which included a declaration of intent to block incremental progression of hundreds of thousands of public service workers - and says that 'yet again Ministers seem to be pushing pay policies that aren’t based on evidence'
http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2013/03/public-sector-pay-squeeze-tightens/
It's early days in the NJC pay dispute but already UNISON local government activists in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are discussing the prospects of membership support for a long overdue industrial mobilisation against the pay freeze.
Activists in Scotland have already agreed a ballot and meet on 15 March to decide on a recommendation. The big (and perennial) question in national pay disputes is what intensity and level of strike action will be be necessary to force the local government employers to think again and abandon their contemptous attitude to its workforce?
Living wage week had a high impact launch with yesterday’s Observer article by David Miliband MP and UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis, which stated that ‘poverty pay has no place in the 21st century’ and noted that 200,000 workers in local government are paid below the living wage of £7.20. There is a collective bargaining solution to this scandalous situation. The NJC pay claim submitted last month calls for ‘a substantial flat rate increase on all scale points as a step towards the longer term objective of restoring pay levels and achieving the living wage as the bottom NJC spinal column point.’ What better way for politicians of all colours to institutionalise a living wage in local government by abandoning the pay freeze and holding meaningful negotiations on the union side claim?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/03/miliband-prentis-living-wage
http://www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/B6085.pdf
