National Pay - where are we?

Pay Award
Thanks to everyone who sent in their views on the Pay talks. I understand that there is a meeting with the negotiators week commencing 11 June 2007. http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=3301

Clearly this is a crucial time for Local Government workers as 2% is a pay cut.

Is it just me? or is everything is going up? from your weekly shop, fuel bills, council tax, rent, mortgage payments!

Year on year pay cuts places local government workers under incredible pressure. This in a country which professes to be the 4th or 5th largest economy?

What is being done to build a campaign across all the public sector trade unions?

Well, it appears quite a lot.

Our colleagues working in Health voted in favour of taking strike action at their UNISON Health conference 4/5 weeks ago. See link http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=3300

Even the Royal College of Nursing hardly known for their militancy are gearing up for industrial action if Brown insists on implementing the Pay cut!
http://www2.rcn.org.uk/campaigns/pay_2007

Communication Workers Union the Postal Workers union
have voted unanimously for strike action
http://www.cwu.org/news.asp?step=3&NID=1724

Public & Commercial Services union (PCS) are campaigning hard and have already started strike action over pay & are calling for action across all the public sector trade unions
http://www.pcs.org.uk/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=911983

NUT Campaign – The teachers union are building up the pressure on their campaign on pay http://www.teachers.org.uk/SalaryCampaign/salarycamp.php

TUC
In March when Gordon Brown published his comprehensive spending review, Brendan Barber TUC General Secretary had this to say http://www.tuc.org.uk/publicsector/tuc-13015-f0.cfm

What does this all mean?
Clearly all the Public Sector unions are keen to take up the fight to protect those members from this pay cut orchestrated by Gordon Brown. However there is still time for negotiations and it is likely any talks of officially balloting members is unlikely to be earlier than September 2007.

With the news that UNISON are supporting Brown’s leadership one can hope that this is a signal that UNISON have some inside information that he can deliver for UNISON members.

It is with this in mind that I think all public sector employees seek answers from th eLabour party. What better opportunity than to challenge those standing for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party. UNISON members may want to particularly direct responses to Alan Johnson as he is being supported by UNISON so send questions to
www.labour.org.uk/leadership/candidates by and clicking on one of the candidates pages

I believe it is important to keep sending messages from our members to our negotiators so Your comments on Pay which we publish and pass on to UNISON to publish.

Lastly keep up to date on National Pay talks by going to the UNISON web site
http://www.unison.org.uk/news/news_view.asp?did=3301