The SNP’s government programme for the next five years raises the threat of more cuts and attacks on the public sector, engagement with unions and service users is essential, argues ROZ FOYER
Rejecting divide-and-rule tactics against the NHS
IAIN MOONEY reports on Unison members’ reaction to government proposals to put nursing staff in different pay categories
School support staff on the picket line outside Castlehead High School in Paisley, Renfrewshire, as staff at four local authorities Glasgow, Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire and Inverclyde, walk out in a continuing dispute with councils over pay, November 1, 2023
MARK JONES recounts the remarkable revolutionary pioneers Goodwyn Barmby and Catherine Watkins, who brought the term communist into the British labour movement.
The West’s policies in Yemen are in tatters as the Ansarallah forces have taken strategic territory and humiliated Saudi-backed militias. This provides an opportunity to end Britain’s shameful policy in the region, argues STEPHEN BELL
KEITH FLETT pays tribute to the resilience of the peace and anti-imperialist movement in Britain that emerged after the September 11 attacks and is ever-more needed today
The US administration is endangering lives by reversing environmental protection laws, CHAUNCEY K ROBINSON argues
It’s time to stop retreating and go on the offensive to promote working-class interests, argues DOUG NICHOLLS
THIS week, Unison held its annual health conference in Brighton. Hot on the agenda was this year’s once again delayed pay offer. Also discussed was the need to reject Tory proposals for separate nursing pay spines.
A tactic that has already caused major uproar nationwide, Unison joined our sister healthcare unions in slamming this proposal.
The Department for Health and Social Care recently launched a consultation to “consider the benefits and challenges of a separate pay spine for nursing staff.”
The consultation put forward two options, one keeping nurses on the Agenda for Change job evaluation system, but giving them a different pay spine and the second where nursing staff would be given an entirely different and separate set of terms, conditions and pay and bargaining structures.
As Britain’s largest healthcare union, it is vital that Unison is leading from the front on this issue. This was echoed by members who spoke against the proposal discussed in the emergency motion called “Divided we fall — invest in Agenda for Change, don’t destroy it.”
2022 saw the government successfully use these divide-and-rule tactics to scupper mass healthcare strikes on pay by playing unions off against each other. Many, including myself, stood up at the Unison national delegate conference and demanded that we as a union do better to combat this in future.
If the past week had shown us anything, it is that the future is now and the time to organise is now.
At a time of great crisis in the NHS, this proposal brings nothing to the table but infighting among workers — the perfect distraction while the government stalls on pay talks. Their plan is to also cause conflict within the trade union movement, some of this already evident. Healthcare workers must remain firm in opposition to this.
Iain Mooney is an NHS nurse and assistant branch secretary of Unison Cumbria and North Lancashire. He writes here in a personal capacity.
Similar stories
TUC passes motion urging ‘all public-sector unions to join a united campaign’ and ‘to plan for co-ordinated industrial action’ if needed
ANN HENDERSON looks at the centenary of the foundation of the STUC women’s committee, and the challenges facing women in the trade unions today