Category: general secretary

Women are at the heart of UNISON’s industrial action

UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea gave an impassioned and rallying address to the union’s national women’s conference today, urging members: “Don’t give up in the face of these challenges.”

With the union’s members involved in a string of pay disputes, across sectors, Ms McAnea noted: “Women are at the heart of the action we’re taking now. I’ve met many of you on the picket lines.

“The right-wing media – and Tory politicians – still like to use the language of the ‘70s when attacking trade unions. They talk disparagingly about ‘trade union barons holding the country to ransom’. Yet again, they’re showing just how out of touch they are, as it’s women who are fronting so many of our disputes and negotiations. And I don’t just mean me. Our lead negotiators across most sectors are women.

“I meet amazing women every day in this job,” she added. “Women whose lives have been changed for the better by our union, who then go on to change other people’s lives for the better.”

Ms McAnea reminded delegates of the nursery nurses’ strike in Scotland in 2003, which was the biggest strike in Scotland since the miners’ strike and was led and planned by the women involved.

“At the end of it, every single nursery nurse was getting higher pay. One of the leaders was our own Carol Ball – who I met through the strike. She inspired me and many other women to get involved and be active in our union.

“I’m sure many of you in this hall will have your own story to tell – and will know someone who is just like Carol. And that’s what a union ought to do: give everyone the opportunity to learn, to grow, and to lead – if that’s what they want to do. That’s why it’s so important that we support each other and don’t give up in the face of these challenges.”

In relation to the multiple crises gripping the UK, she said: “For years we’ve warned successive governments of the urgent need for more investment, planning and change in public services. But they ignored our warnings. And now we find ourselves struggling to make headway in the midst of a perfect storm.

“Across all our public services, the cost-of-living crisis is forcing people to leave jobs they love, because they can get more money working in a supermarket or an Amazon warehouse.

“But conference, this government reckoned without our members. Hasn’t it been fantastic on strike days to see a sea of green and purple on our TVs?… Despite the upheaval and the impact on our public services, polls show we still have huge public support for the action we’re taking. People aren’t taken in by Tory propaganda. They understand our actions are to secure a safer and better future for everyone. And in our critical sectors, our members are still keeping people safe.”

Finally, Ms McAnea asked delegates to think about what they wanted the world to look like, 20 or 30 years from now.

“I know what I want to see – a world where the very idea of your being different because you’re a woman, or a Black person, or disabled seems strange. I want a world where LGBT+ and trans people can be exactly who they want to be, without fear of assault and persecution. Where being Black doesn’t mean you’re more likely to be passed over for promotion or be disciplined at work. And where having a disability isn’t a barrier, but a fact of life. Where it’s not disabled people who have to adapt, but society and work that have to change.

“I want a union where women leaders become the norm – not the exception. So I’m determined to build on the work we’ve already started, developing and supporting women leaders – and Black leaders – in our union.

“I want to make sure that women’s voices are heard at every level. And we can all play our part in making it happen. There will be no turning back from this. We need to be focused, we need to be bold, we need to be loud, and we will make change happen.”

The article Women are at the heart of UNISON’s industrial action first appeared on the UNISON National site.

Blog: Government inaction just leads to more action

An escalation in our industrial action is about to cause more headaches for the Westminster government – an administration that’s already buckling under the pressure.

Working people are standing up for themselves and refusing to quietly accept the pay crisis and a decline in their living standards. In contrast, the government ministers responsible for sorting out public sector pay disputes have gone silent.  

There have been no meetings between UNISON and ministers since before 11 January, and it has been weeks since Rishi Sunak protested on the media that his ‘door was always open’.

But is it? No invite has arrived in my office, and our request to meet the chancellor has gone unanswered.  

Even odder, is the health secretary’s admission to the health select committee that the government hadn’t submitted any evidence to the NHS pay review body

One thing is for sure, the pay crisis that our members are dealing with won’t go away if the government sticks to their current game plan of ignoring workers and their unions.

And the constant dire economic forecasts give nobody hope that the government knows what they’re doing. As we’ve had no progress in resolving our disputes, we’ve announced more NHS and Environment Agency strike dates.

Environment Agency workers will walk out for another 12 hours from 7am on Wednesday, 8 February.

Meanwhile, ambulance workers in London, Yorkshire, the South West, North East and North West will go on strike again on Friday, 10 February.  

Our NHS action, on top of that of other unions, means there’ll be action in the NHS every day this week.

For members who take the difficult decision to go on strike and lose a day’s pay, it’s tough. They need all of our solidarity and our moral support.

We’ve also set up an appeal, and any contribution you can make to the strike fund is very much appreciated.

UNISON has been taking sustained industrial action for some time now. We are now welcoming additional donations to our strike fund.
You can make a one-off bank transfer or set up a regular standing order to:
Account name: UNISON
Account no: 20170693
Sort code: 60-83-01
If you want your donation to go to the health strike fund, please use the reference health. If you want your donation to go to Environment Agency, please use the reference env. If you don’t use a reference it will go to the general strike fund.

The article Blog: Government inaction just leads to more action first appeared on the UNISON National site.

Blog: Why we must defend the right of working people to strike

Thousands of UK workers are being forced to take industrial action to protect their pay, standard of living and the services they provide. But rather than helping workers live decent lives and improving the services that millions of people rely on every day, the Westminster government is turning its back on working people.

Strikes are always a symptom of a problem. But the government’s answer is to fast-track new legislation that will add further restrictions on the right to strike in the health, education, transport, and fire and rescue services, as well as border security and parts of the nuclear, radioactive waste and fuel sectors.

It’s another sticking plaster that won’t fix the deep-rooted causes of industrial disputes. Another distraction from their inability to manage the country’s public services and our economy.

UNISON is supporting the TUC’s campaign to defend the right to strike because this government believes its priority is taking away a legitimate part of industrial negotiations and more importantly, a fundamental right of workers – to withdraw their labour.

The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill is continuing its rapid progress through Parliament this week. It exposes the government’s weakness in coping with a mess of their own making and a failure to respond to the needs of working people.

UNISON’s members are essential workers in public services, and our strike action takes place only after thorough plans for emergency cover have been negotiated and agreed with employers. But under these proposals, even if workers vote for legal industrial action, they could be forced to cross picket lines or be sacked if they don’t.

Sign the petition

The government claims the new law will bring us in line with the rest of Europe, but the European Trades Union Congress doesn’t agree. It says: “The UK already has among the most draconian restrictions on the right to strike in Europe, and the UK government’s plans would push it even further away from normal, democratic practice across Europe.”

Three reasons why the bill is bad for you

Draconian and undemocratic measures are about to be imposed by a government that has spent over a decade creating the situation we’re in now. High inflation, a pay crisis in our public sector, the NHS on its knees, and an economic outlook as grim as the constant sleaze that flows out of Whitehall.

This bill will do nothing to change any of that, and we must be part of the campaign to defeat it.

More on the TUC campaign to defend the right to strike

Right to strike rallies Wednesday 1 February

The article Blog: Why we must defend the right of working people to strike first appeared on the UNISON National site.

Blog: It is within their power to give NHS workers the pay they deserve

UNISON is now into the second full week of our NHS pay strike ballot in England, Cymru Wales and Northern Ireland. We’re still pressing ahead with encouraging as many members as possible to vote and return their ballot papers.

The £1,400 pay award for NHS England and Cymru Wales is a real-terms pay cut for the majority of staff, and staff in Northern Ireland have been given no pay rise at all because of the political paralysis in Stormont.

Our activists and organisers have been speaking to thousands of members, every day since the ballot opened.

Meanwhile, I’ve been out visiting UNISON branches at hospital sites, ambulance stations and control rooms, to help them get the message out to their members.

Ambulance workers in London told me they’ve never seen wait-times outside hospitals so bad, while a branch secretary in a big hospital trust said they’ve had a 25% increase in the number of members requesting hardship support.

Just today, I spoke to operating department practitioners about the foodbank that’s opened in their hospital to help feed staff.

Is it any surprise that trusts are struggling to recruit? With reports of just one healthcare assistant for 14 patients on a night shift, and experienced staff – some with 30 years of service – despairingly describing an NHS that’s never had such a bad staffing crisis.

One member, who’d already voted ‘yes’ and returned their ballot paper, told me: “I want to tell the government that we’re not being selfish by trying to draw attention to the deep problems in the NHS, we’re doing this to save services and patients”.

My fears that the government was failing to either acknowledge or grasp the severity of the crisis were confirmed last night when I was on Newsnight. I had to correct Tory MP Tobias Ellwood on his NHS staff vacancy stats. He said there are 25,000 vacancies, but he’s wrong – it’s more like 135,000.

That’s the true scale of the recruitment and retention crisis in the NHS. And with government threats of a 2% pay cap next year in the public sector, the crisis is only set to deepen.

There are many things that need to be fixed in health and social care across the UK, but sorting out pay would make a huge improvement.

A real-terms pay cut, handed down after the NHS dealt with a traumatic two years through COVID, is insult after injury. And what I’m hearing from NHS staff is that they’re angry and fed up.

They were being clapped when the government needed them to go out to work every day during the pandemic – before we even knew we would find a vaccine – only to be told, now, that they shouldn’t expect their pay to keep up with the cost of living, and that they would be selfish and reckless to take strike action.

This government let frontline workers take responsibility when times were at their toughest, but now it refuses to take responsibility for the things that are in its control.

It is within the government’s power to give NHS workers the decent pay they deserve.

 

UNISON ambulance workers share heartbreaking stories of wait times 

The article Blog: It is within their power to give NHS workers the pay they deserve first appeared on the UNISON National site.

Blog: The £60bn gamble with the future of our country

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng just announced a “new era”. But his party has been in power since 2010, when he was first elected to Parliament. Today’s “not-a-budget” budget, committing tens of billions of pounds on a gamble with the economic future of our country, is in favour of the rich, and at the expense of millions of working people.

We’re in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis that needs urgent action. But Liz Truss and the new chancellor are willing to wait and watch trickle-down Trussonomics spectacularly fail. It’s billed as a “plan for growth”, but we know the only growth will be for bankers, property developers, and to the list of restrictions on trade unions and the queue at the foodbank.

The government has avoided scrutiny from the Office of Budget Responsibility, by calling it a “fiscal event”, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies has signalled why Number 11 was desperate to avoid scrutiny. Their predictions show government plans will leave the country with a £60 billion hole in the nation’s finances.

We’re told there is no money to fix our overstretched public services, and we must rely on one million volunteers to fix the NHS and social care. The NHS is at breaking point, local government is struggling to provide even the most basic local services, and social care is in crisis. When the essential workers we clapped during the pandemic ask for a pay rise, they’re told to accept pay restraint. Today’s budget is proof the money exists. But the political will to help working people doesn’t.

Imagine what we could do with the £60 billion the chancellor is spending on tax cuts and bankers’ bonuses. UNISON’s report published earlier this month, Together We Rise, spelled out how we could solve the cost of living crisis. We offered a plan – and it cost a lot less than £60 billion. Rather than boosting bankers’ bonuses, the government should concentrate on the low-paid workers crying out for help, by ring-fencing the national minimum wage increase, and giving every public service worker a decent pay rise.

It is possible to fix the broken energy sector and soaring energy prices without borrowing more off the backs of working people. It is possible to solve the housing crisis, to top up our deeply inadequate welfare system, and to end long NHS waiting lists and ambulance queues. But the government doesn’t want to. Their priority is to top up the coffers of the wealthiest in society.

As we head into winter, millions will be left worrying about how they will get through it. They’ll be forced to plan which days they can afford to cook food for their families, and which days they can afford to turn on the heating. Because this government has no mask – they’ve made it very clear they’re only on the side of the rich minority.

The article Blog: The £60bn gamble with the future of our country first appeared on the UNISON National site.

Blog: A broken system – in our economy and in social care

Every day we’re confronted with increasingly dire warnings about the state of the UK’s economy. We’re told a recession is on its way, the Bank of England continues to hike up interest rates and inflation just keeps on rising.

And this morning, we learned from the latest labour market statistics, that for seven months in a row, workers’ wages have fallen. In the last quarter, wages were 3% lower in real terms than last year.

The only workers that seem to be immune from wage decline are those in the financial sector – seeing their pay rise by some 20%. But some of the lowest paid workers, who do the already undervalued work of caring for our loved ones when they need it, are in a very different situation.

UNISON members at St Monica Trust care homes in the South West of England are set to lose thousands of pounds, together with a watering down of their sick pay.

Despite a national shortage of care staff of around 150,000, the most experienced staff are earmarked for the biggest cuts. The insult is compounded with the threat of the sack unless they accept the pay cut. Fire and rehire tactics are simply appalling, and the trust has hurt the workforce even more by advertising for agency staff at an hourly rate of £16.81 – £7 more than what the St Monica workforce is currently earning.

Our members at St Monica care homes have already taken strike action, but today they’ll walk out again for another five days. They’re left with no option, because they need to make their employers see sense and agree to meet with UNISON to negotiate, and to allow workers representation in meetings.

We could face a new wave of COVID this autumn and the care sector cannot afford to lose experienced and dedicated staff. Treating staff this way could push them out the door for better paid jobs in supermarkets just down the street.

The crisis we’re seeing in the care sector and the behaviour of employers at St Monica are symptoms of a broken system that does not operate in the best interests of service users, their families, workers or society. Huge profits are being made by care home owners at the expense of everybody else.

We need a national social care service that strips out profit making, puts investment back into care and gives workers career progression, financial stability, and respect and dignity in their working lives.

Until that happens, we will continue to see similar disputes with unscrupulous employers, because UNISON will be backing our members to demand better.

Share this message today to show your solidarity for striking care workers.

The article Blog: A broken system – in our economy and in social care first appeared on the UNISON National site.

When we have no choice but to strike

UNISON’s higher education strike ballot opened last Friday (22 July) and we’re holding an online rally this Thursday to help branches organise to get the vote out.

Higher education salaries are now worth a shocking 20% less in real terms than in 2009. Our claim was for a pay uplift of at least inflation (RPI) plus 2%, but with inflation now running at 9.4%, the final offer from employers fell well short.

They’re offering 3% to all on spine point 20 and above, with a taper of between 9 and 3.1% for those on lower spine points. It’s no surprise then, that we’re recommending that our HE members vote ‘yes’ to taking strike action.

Also, UNISON health members in Scotland are taking part in a consultative ballot which closes on 8 August. If you’re a Scottish health member, we’re recommending you vote ‘reject’ to the 5% pay offer and indicate that you’re willing to take strike action.

We’ve also recently received pay offers for our members in local government and health in other parts of the UK, and in other sections of the union, so there will be more ballots to come. Whether you’re part of a vote that’s consultative, or for industrial action, you must have your say, because these ballots are an important part of a healthy democracy.

Workers should always be free to decide how they want to respond to pay offers, changes to terms and conditions, and threats to jobs – and as a last resort, to go on strike to defend their livelihoods and to improve their working lives. As the cost of living crisis shows no signs of easing, these rights are more important than ever.

We know the Trade Union Act was designed to suppress workers’ abilities to respond and act. And now, both candidates battling it out to be the most right-wing Conservative leader are promising more attacks on the right to strike, and offering nothing for public services. They’ve been very clear that they’re coming for workers. But trade unions, like ours, remain the last line of defence, so we must be ready for what’s to come.

It’s constant work for our amazing activists, making sure branches meet members regularly, always recruiting, keeping member records up to date and sharing information from the union. But the more we do that every day, in every branch across the UK, the more ready we are for when we have no other choice but to take strike action.

The article When we have no choice but to strike first appeared on the UNISON National site.

Blog: The Tory leadership race

Today, there are still five candidates left standing in the race to be the next Conservative leader and prime minister. The third round of voting is today and follows a weekend of campaigning and embarrassing TV debates.

Each one of the candidates is a part of the ruling Tory party that’s been in power for the past 12 years. Most have served in Boris Johnson’s government as either a cabinet or junior minister, and all propped up and voted through a Tory agenda that has led us to where we are today – a deepening cost of living crisis, and an integrity vacuum at the top of British politics.

Yet the debates over the weekend would make anyone think they’re all from different parties, tearing chunks out of each other personally, and on their weak manifestos. Liz Truss claimed former Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s plans would drive the country into a recession, Penny Mordaunt had no economic plan at all, and Kemi Badenoch made some alarming comments against green policies, despite historic red warnings being issued in the UK.

Tom Tugendhat lacked any enthusiasm for the top job and, as the candidates rounded off the debate with their closing speeches, Liz Truss had to look at her notes to remind herself that she thinks the big issue at the next election will be the economy.

Each tried desperately to distance themselves from Boris Johnson, and all admitted, in their own way, that the country needs change and can do better. Well, yes, they’re right to some extent, the country does need a change. But that change shouldn’t include anyone from the party that has been in power for the last 12 years.

And there was something starker, more troubling – not only for our public services, but for the future of our society. As they try to out right-wing each other, paying homage to Margaret Thatcher and pledging a smaller state, it’s clear our NHS, schools, local councils and policing are not safe in any of their hands.

This is a crucial time for our public services and public service workers, but they’re all determined to stick to public sector pay restraint, warning that pay rises will turbocharge inflation. We know this isn’t true, because there’s been low inflation over the last decade, at the same time as real terms pay cuts in the public sector.

Tory party members alone will get to decide who our next prime minister will be. They number just over one tenth of the total UNISON membership, no more than that, and are not representative of the general population. But these live debates have given all of us an unusual close-up of the Tories’ division, chaos and incompetence, and a front row view of their dying days in Westminster.

The final debate has been cancelled, because the two most senior politicians, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, have pulled out. I guess they finally realised that when, the gloves are off, and the public gets a glimpse of their real characters, they damage their chances of winning the next general election.

The article Blog: The Tory leadership race first appeared on the UNISON National site.