Apr 24 2007
Health workers will vote on industrial action if the government does not improve its 2.5% pay offer - worth just 1.9% in England and Wales because of staging - UNISON's health conference has warned.
Delegates voted unanimously to reject the staged 2.5% award, seek a meeting with Chancellor Gordon Brown - who took it upon himself to stage the award, contrary to the pay review body's decision - and work with other unions to secure an improved, non-staged award.
It also rejected an identical offer made to non-medical staff through the pay negotiating council.
And while commending the Scottish executive's decision to honour the award in full, and offer an unstaged 2.5% for workers covered by collective bargaining, conference reiterated its opposition to 2.5% "in whatever shape or form".
Moving the successful motion, senior national officer Mike Jackson, speaking for the service group executive, called the government action a "disgrace", whose architects had been the prime minister and chancellor.
Speaker after speaker lined up to reiterate that point, stating that, with RPI inflation running at 4.8% in March, the award and offer amounted to a pay cut of more than 2% as members found their money no longer stretching as far as it did.
Mr Jackson, who is the chief negotiator on NHS pay, said a key test would come on Friday, when the pay negotiating council meets with the staged 2.5% offer on the table from the employers.
He asked conference to give him the power to go into those talks with a "clear message" for the employers: "Go back and improve this offer or we will go out to members asking: 'Are you prepared to take industrial action'."
Delegates happily gave him that power, voting unanimously for negotiators to reaffirm the joint union claim for a substantial pay rise "above the rate of inflation (RPI)" with additional measures for the lower pay bands.
And conference warned government and employers that if they did not make an improved offer, "within a reasonable period, paid in full and backdated to 1 April 2007", the union will ballot members "and recommend a vote for industrial action up to and including strike action".
"We do not do this lightly," said Mr Jackson, "but if this government is going to introduce Tory policies, we'll respond to them as we did to Tories."