Local Government NJC Pay Dispute 2008 and Future Pay Strategy

Government policy to hold down pay for Council workers as outlined in the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review for 2007-2011 is set to continue beyond this period. The pre budget report in November 2008 calls for “continued discipline” and multi year pay deals. This is part of the Government’s objective to control local government spending to […]

Organising School Staff

Recruiting and organising school staff remains a major issue for this union. The proposed negotiating framework for schools in England and the changing working environment, resulting in increased roles and responsibilities for all staff in schools, highlight the need to improve the unions’ organisation in this area. Conference is aware that some branches have been […]

Recruit, Recruit

It is clear from the 2008 NJC and SJC pay disputes that our low density in many local authorities and outsourced local government services undermines our bargaining power at local and at national level. The LGA is controlled by the Conservatives, out of a total of 440 local authorities; the majority of local authorities are […]

Supporting Social Care Staff

This Conference affirms UNISON’s respect and support for the dedicated members in Social Care who provide care to the most vulnerable people in our society and welcomes the moves towards registration of Home Carers. This union believes that often the media and politicians from all parties are too willing to lay the blame for our […]

Growing Crisis in Social Work

Conference notes with alarm the mounting pressures on social workers and condemns the witch-hunts and vilification against social workers waged by parts of the media. They ignore the facts and the pressures in favour of finding easy targets to blame. Both Government and Opposition politicians have equally cynically fuelled the media campaign, often in direct […]

Rarely Cover

This Conference notes with regret the latest advice from UNISON issued on 2 May 2009, around the issue of “Rarely Cover” in classrooms. This advice has been sent direct to schools and is already being used by headteachers to undermine existing pay and conditions of service. This Conference notes that in Kirklees the local WAMG […]

Nurse Training

Conference reaffirms previous UNISON commitment to: ·Ensure that the commissioning of nurse training numbers is based upon proper evaluation of workforce needs and planned for appropriately. ·Not exploit developing country’s labour markets in recruiting nurses to work in the UK. ·Support widening access initiatives towards the opening up of Higher Education to diverse students from […]

Apprenticeships in the Health Service

Conference welcomes the Department of Health’s increasing commitment to Apprenticeships, recognising that these provide a further means of attracting young people into the health workforce as well as providing existing staff in pay bands 1 to 4 with a new high quality opportunity to develop themselves and to progress in their careers. Apprenticeships are an […]

NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework

Conference notes that as an integral part of Agenda for Change, the NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework (KSF) is a crucial tool for supporting the effective delivery of health care services. It is designed to enable staff to develop the necessary skills to carry out their roles with efficiency and flexibility, creating a workforce that […]

Influencing the Procurement and Efficiency Agenda

Over the next five years local commissioners (Primary Care Trusts), will be reviewing most current contracts within the NHS and looking closely at value for money, while the remainder of local NHS providers will be moving forward to NHS Foundation Trust status. Conference re-affirms its opposition to all forms of market-testing, contestability and privatisation in […]

Commissioning and Procurement in the NHS

Conference notes the government’s World Class Commissioning programme which aims to transform the way health and care services are commissioned in England. Conference expresses its alarm that much of the focus of the World Class Commissioning programme is about stimulating the market and finding alternative providers to the NHS We restate our continued opposition to […]

Personalised Health Budgets in the NHS

Conference notes with serious concern the plans in Lord Darzi’s ‘High Quality Care for All’ report to pilot-test personal budgets and direct payments for long-term conditions in the NHS in England with a view to a national roll-out. Whilst conference supports the objective of empowering service users and, as much as possible, putting them in […]

Greening Further Education

This Conference believes that if we are to tackle climate change we have to negotiate changes to the way we work. Over two thirds of UK carbon dioxide emissions are work related. Colleges teach and train over three million people every year. In doing so they use significant amounts of energy and other resources and […]

Bargaining in a Multi Party Political Climate

Conference notes that in the current political structures there are a variety of combinations of political parties forming administrations at local/council level, devolved parliamentary level and at the employers organisations. Whilst there are still some single party administrations (Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat) there are many more coalitions, alliances, no-over-all-controls, etc. In the Scottish Parliament there […]

Further Education “Time to Pay Up” Campaign

This Conference endorses the “Time to Pay Up” Campaign for our members in Further Education by focusing on the minority of colleges that refuse to implement nationally agreed pay deals, resulting in up to 50% of colleges not being on any comparable, nationally agreed pay scale. This causes confusion throughout the sector when comparing jobs […]