WELSH trade unionists told the new Plaid Cymru government to show where its loyalties lie today by intervening to resolve two bitter industrial disputes.

About 100 specialist nurses called health visitors are in their 13th week of strike action at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board over its refusal to upgrade them from Band 6 to Band 7 in the NHS Agenda for Change structure, which costs them up to £9,000 a year.

Moving an emergency motion backing their strike, Katrine Williams of Cardiff Trades Council said she was proud the Unite members had led the city’s May Day march.

“It’s very clear from their qualifications and the job evaluation process that these workers are owed £8-9,000 [more] a year,” she said.

Wales’s last health minister Jeremy Miles had asked the health board to respect the job evaluation process, and Ms Williams called on new Health Minister Mabon ap Gwynfor to “get his teeth stuck into this.”

Seconding, Unite’s Sarah Davis said Wales’s social partnership structures had driven the job evaluation process, in which the union and the workers had engaged in good faith, but “the employer failed to honour this process.”

The health board maintains that “there is no band 7 health visitor job description that has been agreed in partnership,” but the emergency motion called the claim “dishonest.”

Delegates also backed an emergency motion demanding pressure on Senedd members over attacks on the pensions of National Library of Wales staff, with PCS members overwhelmingly endorsing industrial action in a consultative ballot to stop a scheme to raise the retirement age and increase their pension contributions while reducing the employer’s.