UNISON is launching its pay campaign Worth It in the House of Commons this afternoon.
General secretary Dave Prentis will address MPs at the parliamentary briefing, joined by UNISON president Maureen Le Marinel and Karen Jennings, assistant general secretary for bargaining, negotiating and equalities.
Members from most of UNISON’s regions will also be speaking directly about their experiences in trying to make ends meet as the struggle against austerity continues.
Worth It is an umbrella campaign that embraces and informs all of the union’s many responses to the pay crisis, including national negotiations for health, local government and higher education, a sector-wide campaign for a living wage, and a challenge to zero hours contracts.
Mr Prentis is telling MPs that: “In the current climate, politicians – and particularly this government- have often lost sight of the value of our public service workforce”.
He will highlight the fact that, over the course of the last three years – during which time many public service workers have been on a virtual pay freeze – inflation has cut 16% off of the value of their pay packets.
The politicians will also learn of a new report produced for UNISON by The New Economics Foundation, which identifies the biggest fall in living standards since the Victorian era.
As members face another year of pay hardship in 2014, MPs will start to hear a lot more about Worth It from their constituents.
Today, Mr Prentis is urging the politicians themselves to sign up to a campaign “that will fight for a country where our public servants are properly rewarded, not callously reviled.”
