The Nursing Times has an article in it this week reporting on an opinion poll conducted on its own website in which 87% said that the health unions should reject the new pay offer. They quote one nurse saying "the government needs to realise an enormously important principle is at stake - a measly £38 [all that qualified nurses will see of the new offer] does not begin to address it".
Clearly, the unions' own campaigns earlier in the year have had a big impact - on health workers if not on the Government negotiators. NHS staff now rightly believe that they deserve a pay rise which is both (a) at least in line with inflation, and (b) not broken down into stages. If the unions (or at least some of them) now want us to accept such an offer because "it is the best offer that can be achieved through negotiations" then they have a problem.
The current offer simply isn't good enough. If it is the best that can be got without taking industrial action, then most health workers would say, "let's take action". The Nursing Times poll backs up that view, and also suggests that the unions could be in danger of falling behind their own members. RCN members have voted overwhelmingly this week in favour of being balloted for industrial action, yet the union is putting everything on hold for a month because of the new, marginally improved, offer, and is already talking about running a further consultation exercise in September.
Presumably the RCN is hoping that by then the UNISON and Unite consultations will have generated either a majority in favour of accepting the offer or a low enough turnout that the officials can declare that "there is no mood for industrial action amongst members" - a refrain we're all getting heartily sick of in UNISON. There's no mood to accept a pay cut, either!
The unions are falling over themselves to avoid being the ones to declare first what they're going to do about the pay offer. They all know the offer is inadequate. Today's news from the RCN and the Nursing Times shows that NHS staff know it too. Yet the UNISON national officials continue to describe the offer in press statements and circulars to branches simply as "improved" and "offering more help to the low paid" with no mention of the fact that it remains a below inflation rise even for those getting the most "help". Unite-Amicus go one step further by actually recommending that their members should accept the new offer, even though it represents a pay cut.
For all their talk of using the consultation ballot to recruit new members, the unions seem scared to do the one thing which would have the non-union NHS workers (possibly as many as half of our colleagues are not even in a union) flocking to sign up: run a serious campaign to encourage us to reject the offer and do what is necessary to win the pay rise we deserve.
The first union to work this out, and switch their policy away from talk to action will see a massive increase in membership. But if none of them are willing to risk falling out with Gordon Brown over his 2% pay limit then this year's pay campaign could lead not just to a below inflation pay rise but also to people ripping up their union cards in disgust. Unite Amicus needs to desperately reconsider its ill-judged decision to recommend the new offer to members, while UNISON has about five days to put out some better publicity for the ballot - and if the national leadership can't or won't do so, then we'd encourage UNISON branches to restore the balance by telling their members the truth about how far below our demands the current offer really is.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Nursing Times says majority want to reject pay offer
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And this is the RCN press release
Indicative ballot on industrial action - results and next steps
Aug 13, 2007
A special meeting was held today (Monday 13 August) of the Royal College of Nursing's Membership, Representation and Diversity Committee (MRDC) to consider the results of the indicative ballot of RCN members employed by England's NHS and the improved offer made by the Government mid-way through the ballot.
The votes in the ballot were as follows:
32,348 (95.1 per cent) voted YES (for a formal ballot on industrial action)
1,670 (4.9 per cent) voted NO (against a formal ballot)
MRDC members decided to provide the detail of the Government's new pay offer to members and invite feedback. The committee wishes to hear what members think about the improved offer before making a decision to accept or reject, and will make the decision only following a wide consultation through branches and regions and individual members culminating in the special delegate conference on 15th September. Further details of the consultation process will be announced shortly.
Almost 184,000 ballot papers were distributed to RCN members working for NHS organisations in England and 34,018 voted - a turnout of 18.49 per cent.
General Secretary of the RCN, Dr Peter Carter, said:
“The Government's original offer was unfair and unacceptable. For the first time in our history, the RCN responded by holding a national ballot about industrial action. After months of the Government saying they wouldn't improve the offer, they did. The revised offer is not all that we asked for, but it could well be the means to resolve the current dispute and allow us to make progress on a range of workplace and professional issues. It is clear, however, that this is a full and final offer from the Government.”
Chair of the RCN's Membership, Representation and Diversity Committee, Mike Travis, said:
“The ballot result shows just how fed up nurses were with the original pay award. What we now need to do is go back to members and gauge their response to this improved offer before Council makes its final decision whether to accept the award in September
I see little point in industrial action against the staging of the pay offer when the underlying offer is half the rate of inflation. This is typical of the way Mike Jackson operates. He gets righteously indignant and than accepts a slight management concession which is what they were prepared to give in the first place. Look at his Agenda for Change promises. 'Nothing is agree until everything is agreed'. Now we are being asked to accept an unsocial hours agreement that is for many staff a cut in their current arrangements.
If Unison called for a 5% pay rise, it might be worth taking industrial action but even the better paid will only be £140 worse off with the current proposals compared to the unstaged rise. And this after three years of low pay rises so we could have the privilege of Agenda for Change.
"EVERYBODY OUT"
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