Unison Narrowly Votes in Favour of Pay Offer

A motion to reject the three year pay deal was narrowly defeated at the Unison Healthcare Conference by 214,059 to 201,001 after a card vote was taken. This illustrates the strength of feeling against the deal which offers sub-inflation pay rises for the second and possible third and fourth year in a row.

Unite has already rejected the offer as well as some of the smaller unions including the Royal College of Midwives.

Threats have been made by the NHS Chief Executive, David Nicholson, to impose an even worse pay deal if the three year deal is rejected when it goes to a ballot of the full membership.

The pay situation since the first three year pay deal in 2004 is as follows:
For every pound you earned in 2004, you now earn £1.16 if the current deal is accepted, if your pay had kept up with inflation, you would be earning £1.18 and if your pay had kept up with earnings, you would be earning £1.22. This is just a repeat of what happened twenty years ago when our pay was steadily eroded until nurses were forced to take industrial action.