Nursing Times says majority want to reject pay offer

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.