The Chancellor’s autumn statement contained more misery for public service workers and shows the need for our union to keep up the fight for a fairer economy, said general secretary Dave Prentis at UNISON’s NEC in London today.
“Organising and recruitment have got to be our priority,” he said, urging activists to let non-members see that “they need the protection of a union more now than at any time in the past… And we need to show them we can give them that protection.”
“We’re one union,” he said, “and our priority across the union is recruitment, organising and protecting our members. That is what we will concentrate all our resources on,” he said, announcing a recruitment campaign that would be launched in the spring.
Assistant general secretary for organising Roger McKenzie agreed that there should be a focus on recruitment, “but we need to focus on retention as well,” he said. Chair of development and organising committee Sue Highton added that it’s about recruiting the people “who’ve sat next to their colleagues and heard about what the union’s done and they’ve not joined – they’re the people we need to get to.”
“The whole union’s going to be galvanised,” said assistant general secretary for policy and communications Liz Snape: “regions recruiting and organising, our army of local organisers out there recruiting. We’ll turn this head office inside out.”
Following on from the demonstration on 20 October, where “UNISON stole the show,” Mr Prentis said, UNISON will urge the TUC to campaign on three issues: poverty, tax evasion and George Osborne’s rebooted PFI – ‘PF2’.
On poverty, he said it was shocking that “poor people were getting even poorer”, on tax evasion he praised UK Uncut’s work to get young people involved around a single issue such as Starbucks’ tax evasion and on PF2 he warned that the changes to PFI were “only cosmetic” and that “the cost of borrowing to future generations has not changed.”
Pay is going up the agenda for public service workers – but still not at the top said Mr Prentis, but our members “want to know their union is standing up for them, for better pay, for decent pay.”
He explained that UNISON would work with the TUC on co-ordinating work around pay and noted that Mr Osborne had performed a u-turn on regional pay in his autumn statement today.
In health, pay negotiations are focused on defending Agenda for Change from trusts such as those in the South West pay cartel, which are looking at moving to local negotiations.
In further and higher education, offers have been reluctantly accepted.
In local government, the NJC pay claim for England, Wales and Northern Ireland was lodged in October for ‘a substantial flat rate increase on all scale points as a step toward the longer term objectives of restoring pay levels and achieving the living wage as the bottom NJC spinal point.’
Local government workers are also facing attacks on green book terms and conditions. The NEC also heard reports on:
- financial planning and budgeting;
- draft objectives for 2013;
- equal pay, pay and pensions;
- the union’s public services and other campaigning;
- recruiting and organising;
- management accounts;
- the recent Public Services International congress (for further reports see UNISON’s news pages;
- disciplinary and staffing issues;
- UIA;
- UNISON’s work on anti-far right groups;
- previous NEC and committee meeting minutes.
