Blog: Pay up now!

Two weeks ago at our national delegate conference, I said that this had to be our year to smash the pay cap once and for all.

It’s now even clearer that we have a golden opportunity in front of us – with a Tory government on the ropes and the British people in our corner – to win the pay rise UNISON members not only need, but deserve. In recent days, even Tory MPs have started to say what we all know to be true – that the pay cap needs to go.

We want to hold them to that, so that the recent vote in Parliament which maintained the pay cap, is never repeated.

That’s why we’re launching a new campaign, which we’ll be rolling out over the summer, to win all public sector workers the pay rise that you have for so long been denied.

It’s called Pay Up Now!

Pay is the number one priority for UNISON, and that means this campaign will be our priority too – and we’ll be throwing the kitchen sink at getting real pay rises back on the table.

And we’re going to need all of you to get involved.

We need you lobbying MPs and campaigning across the country.,

We need you to be taking arguments about fair pay and the rises you’re owed to social media.

We need you on marches and demonstration.

And we need your stories and your ideas to inform the advertising campaign we’ll be rolling out to win the argument with the public, as well as the politicians.

There’s so much to do, but I know that we can win and we will win, because politicians now realise, if they didn’t before, that they cannot cynically praise public sector workers one moment before denying them a fair wage the next. That sort of two-faced behaviour won’t cut it anymore.

It’s time to end the pay cap. It’s time to put your pay up now.