Strike!

[andysays]

I don't think it works like that? But happy to be put straight.
I was in GMB before and they were just short of the 40% mandate on whether to strike- I'm not sure if that's all the members of GMB voting or just those in nursing?

It would have been just those in nursing, or whatever group is involved.

I'm in Unite, in local government, and we will be having a vote soon on whether to accept the new offer from our employers. Only Unite members in local government will be balloted, not  all Unite members.

 

[kalidarkone]

It would have been just those in nursing, or whatever group is involved.

I'm in Unite, in local government, and we will be having a vote soon on whether to accept the new offer from our employers. Only Unite members in local government will be balloted, not  all Unite members.

Cheers for the clarification- that's what I thought.....there is your answer Agent Sparrow

 

[Karl Masks]

They are notoriously Conservative (generally not politically) I only joined because GMB were shit and it seemed that it was only RCN that got the mandate to strike.
If it ends here then everything has been fucking pointless......we have a massive opportunity....

That's the risk. But otoh there will be many workers that will have learned on the picket lines and gotten a real taste of solidarity

 

[PR1Berske]

The media presenting the offer to NHS workers as a done deal is really annoying me. And I'm not even an NHS worker.

I thought that myself. Front page declarations of success without any sense that the members will vote for it. Spin? From both sides?

 

[Agent Sparrow]

I don't think it works like that? But happy to be put straight.
I was in GMB before and they were just short of the 40% mandate on whether to strike- I'm not sure if that's all the members of GMB voting or just those in nursing?

I have no idea!

I joined Amacus, which was then taken into Unite shorty afterwards. I can only recall one occasion of going on proper strike with them in those 16 years, and it’s always seemed Unison are quicker to strike. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have clout I guess.

It would have been just those in nursing, or whatever group is involved.

I'm in Unite, in local government, and we will be having a vote soon on whether to accept the new offer from our employers. Only Unite members in local government will be balloted, not  all Unite members.

I did see something about Unite workers from x sector (ambulances?) striking. I remember being balloted - I guess our group didn’t get that critical mass of votes

 

[Lord Camomile]

UCU members vote to vote

 

[Lord Camomile]

Not entirely clear if they have also voted to suspend action, but you have to think... yes?

 

[Serge Forward]

Not entirely clear if they have also voted to suspend action, but you have to think... yes?

View attachment 367020

It's a fucking shambles.

 

[andysays]

Not entirely clear if they have also voted to suspend action, but you have to think... yes?

View attachment 367020

The way the question is phrased is not 100% clear, but to me it suggests that anyone voting yes is agreeing to both clauses.

There doesn't appear to be an option to vote for consultation while still continuing the strike.

It's tempting to suspect that's deliberate rather than accidental.

 

[PursuedByBears]

I'm glad I left UCU. Grady seems even worse than the waste-of-space she replaced, whatever her name was.

 

[PursuedByBears]

Eballot result was two-thirds in favour of a vote on the proposals. 36K members voted.
Branch Delegate Meeting yesterday narrowly supported putting the proposals out to vote and also voted to continue strike action.
HEC met today and voted to continue action and also NOT to allow members to vote on the proposals.
Strike action continues next week.

 

[LDC]

About 200 people in a cross union healthworkers meeting tonight, angry as fuck.

 

[hitmouse]

It would have been just those in nursing, or whatever group is involved.

I'm in Unite, in local government, and we will be having a vote soon on whether to accept the new offer from our employers. Only Unite members in local government will be balloted, not  all Unite members.

But, given the sectionalism of some health unions, probably worth stressing that Unite will have been balloting all their members in the NHS, not just those in nursing (at least potentially, I think they might've done it bit-by-bit in a fairly selective way?)

I have no idea!

I joined Amacus, which was then taken into Unite shorty afterwards. I can only recall one occasion of going on proper strike with them in those 16 years, and it’s always seemed Unison are quicker to strike. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have clout I guess.


I did see something about Unite workers from x sector (ambulances?) striking. I remember being balloted - I guess our group didn’t get that critical mass of votes

Yeah, as someone outside of the NHS it seems to me like Unite don't have much of a presence there, and it tends to be in certain groups like porters and technicians? I think they did get some results among ambulance workers, but they only had a single hospital branch that managed to get over the 50% line. Which makes the whole thing that bit much more depressing, if the other unions sell out I don't think that one hospital branch on their own is going to change much.

Statement from the left in the Unison Health SGE here:

Why we should reject the NHS England pay offer — Time For Real Change

We can do better. Reballot all health workers without a mandate, reinstate the action! We have to start by saying clearly that we would have got nothing extra this year if it had not been for amazing health workers who voted by massive majorities for strikes across many unions. And for those who

timeforrealchange.uk

We can do better.
Reballot all health workers without a mandate, reinstate the action!
We have to start by saying clearly that we would have got nothing extra this year if it had not been for amazing health workers who voted by massive majorities for strikes across many unions. And for those who crossed 50% turnout thresholds and went on strike – in the RCN, in UNISON, in CSP physios, in Unite and in GMB and now in the BMA. We all owe real thanks to those who courageously and defiantly stood on cold pickets. And to those who have solidarity. It shows strikes can win rises.
The offer for 2022/23 is a big improvement on the absolutely insulting £1,400 (4.7% average). It is 6% more and will be paid as a one off lump sum. It is funded.
Unfortunately it will be non-consolidated. This means it is a one-off payment that will not continue to an increased salary next year.
So we get an increased NHS pay bill for 2022/23 of 10.75%. This is much better than 4.7%, but it is still well below inflation. It means the 13th year of NHS pay awards below inflation.
For 2023/24 the offer is really bad. It’s 5% across the board except for the bottom of band 2 which is abolished so get 10.4%. Once you take away the 6% non consolidated rise from 2022/23, it means a 5% across the board rise. This amounts to anyone below top band 7 getting 1% or more less in pounds in our pay packets that we did in 2022/3. It’s a pay cut of 1% that year e.g. £352 less for top band 5.
How will two more years of pay cuts stop health workers leaving the NHS? How will it enable us to fill the 135,000 unfilled vacancies we have now? How will it improve patient care or staff well-being as we work harder and harder?
We could have done so much better. Junior doctors in the BMA (whose starting salary after 5 years at Uni is only £14.10 per hour) joined the strike action this week. They are determined to win pay restoration of all the money they have lost in the last 15 years. Their 3 days’ strike action without any exemptions really put the government under pressure and led to our talks.
Imagine what we could win if unions reballoted all their branches who did not reach the thresholds. If strikes were reinstated. If the BMA and other health unions fought together. We could strike together and win together - united, one Team, One NHS, happy staff with safe numbers to do a proper job.
We do not see any group of staff as different or better than any others. We all play our part. We all pay bills. We need to stand together, not separate. Just like we do not fall for their attacks on people who come in small boats, when we know it’s the people in big boats and super-yachts who are ripping us off in utility, fuel, supermarket, PPE and other profiteering scandals.
What can we do now? We think we should reject this deal as we can do better, especially for the second year.
However poor we are, don’t be bribed by the first year lump sum into accepting an actual pay cut in the second. It just delays our debts. The government can find money like they did for Defence (£5bn, which would pay the junior doctors 35% claim 5 times over), £2bn for rich people’s pensions, £200bn for Trident.
We should:
Reject NHS pay offer
Reballot all members for strike
Reinstate the action
We can do much better.

 

[hitmouse]

Eballot result was two-thirds in favour of a vote on the proposals. 36K members voted.
Branch Delegate Meeting yesterday narrowly supported putting the proposals out to vote and also voted to continue strike action.
HEC met today and voted to continue action and also NOT to allow members to vote on the proposals.
Strike action continues next week.

Good thing that they're not doing anything else important, like running an aggregated ballot which'll affect their members' ability to take any more action going forward. Cos if they were doing something like that, you might think that all this buggering around could really undermine members' confidence and enthusiasm and risk completely undermining the ballot turnout.

 

[ska invita]

 

[hitmouse]

Some detail on the UCEA offer for those who don't fancy an hour-long podcast:

Too much, not enough

[Written under pressure, for obvious reasons. If there are any errors, let me know, and I will correct them as soon as possible.] Yesterday, 15 March, at about 1400, UCU’s UK office announced…

michael4hec.wordpress.com

On “contract types”, i.e. casualisation, UCU’s Twitter account claims that:

Moving every single university worker who doesn’t [have] a zero-hours contract off them is life-changing for thousands of our members And it sets a benchmark for workers everywhere

This does indeed seem like a major advance. Unfortunately, it is not true. First, there is no commitment to ending zero-hours contracts. The offer says:

While the contractual arrangements offered to employees will be for individual institutions to determine, we would expect indefinite contracts with a fixed or minimal hours to be the general form of employment relationship between employers and employees in HEIs. We accept that there will be specifically defined reasons in any organisation for offering indefinite or fixed term employment arrangements without fixed or minimum hours where it is appropriate. We would expect these
reasons to be discussed between HEIs and their local trade unions.

This is not an agreement to end zero-hours contracts; it is an agreement to hope that employers will offer their employees more secure contracts, except where they have “specifically defined reasons” for doing otherwise. This is not an improvement on the status quo, where casualisation is being reduced through local negotiations.

There is a second problem with this statement: note the use of the word “employees”, where UCU Twitter says “workers”. In common usage, a “worker” is anyone working for a living, and UCU members might be forgiven for assuming that “workers” means “everyone working for a university”. In employment law, however, a “worker” and an “employee” are not the same, and have quite different rights. ACAS has a helpful explanation of the difference. What is relevant here is that many of the people affected by casualisation are not “employees”: they are “workers” and would not be covered by the offer on the table. An average union member might not appreciate the distinction, but the employers do, and if the union representatives in the room did not know the difference, they had no business being there.

 

[Lord Camomile]

Not entirely clear if they have also voted to suspend action, but you have to think... yes?

...and you would be wrong, you fool!!!

Strike action continues next week.

I don't envy those trying to organise national campaign, I really don't, but fuck me does this seem to have been a series of colossal own goals.

Good thing that they're not doing anything else important, like running an aggregated ballot which'll affect their members' ability to take any more action going forward. Cos if they were doing something like that, you might think that all this buggering around could really undermine members' confidence and enthusiasm and risk completely undermining the ballot turnout.

Eeeeeeeexactly.

 

[LDC]

Might kick off in the RCN kalidarkone...

Nurses to trigger no-confidence vote in their union over ‘terrible’ NHS pay deal

Members are calling for a vote of no confidence in the RCN's senior leadership team, pay negotiators and ruling Council.

nursingnotes.co.uk

 

[aqua]

I'm glad I left UCU. Grady seems even worse than the waste-of-space she replaced, whatever her name was.

As you know I was debating doing the same last year and didn't. I saw this round of strikes as very much needed time off as I've lost any belief in the union. Really do not like Grady. Not sure where to go from here tbh. I've lost so much pay for what? And yet if everyone leaves then what chance do we have? But what has all this been for? But if everyone goes what happens then. And round and round and round my thinking goes and here I am still a member just really fucking fed up.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Good thing that they're not doing anything else important, like running an aggregated ballot which'll affect their members' ability to take any more action going forward. Cos if they were doing something like that, you might think that all this buggering around could really undermine members' confidence and enthusiasm and risk completely undermining the ballot turnout.

Spot on. This is astonishing stuff. Why on earth would a - putatively left - leadership attempt to publicly drive a wedge between the membership and the activist base of the union at such a critical moment? It’s almost like they want to lose the dispute. Shameful stuff reproducing the worst tactics and character of the old right of the movement

 

[kalidarkone]

Might kick off in the RCN kalidarkone...

Nurses to trigger no-confidence vote in their union over ‘terrible’ NHS pay deal

Members are calling for a vote of no confidence in the RCN's senior leadership team, pay negotiators and ruling Council.

nursingnotes.co.uk

Thanks for that....I have responded!

 

[kalidarkone]

Spot on. This is astonishing stuff. Why on earth would a - putatively left - leadership attempt to publicly drive a wedge between the membership and the activist base of the union at such a critical moment? It’s almost like they want to lose the dispute. Shameful stuff reproducing the worst tactics and character of the old right of the movement

Brown envelope shit? Individuals benefiting?

 

[Dystopiary]

 

[hitmouse]

NHS workers bulletin:

 

[SpookyFrank]

Looking forward to the unfunded, below-inflation pay deal for teachers that doesn't mention workload, conditions or OFSTED at all. With only one teaching union having a strike mandate it's likely Keegan's offer will be even worse than what nurses have been offered.

TBH I don't care about pay. I would like to see pay evened out so teachers who actually teach aren't making half what the managers and box-tickers get; and so teaching assistant is a job you can actually live on. More important is reining in OFSTED and the academy chains. But there's no real prospect of any progress there.

 

[hitmouse]

NHS union members step up campaign to reject ‘paltry’ pay deal

Cross-union group sends out leaflets and hold online calls to persuade staff to vote against package agreed by leaders

www.theguardian.com

 

[hitmouse]

New Notes from Below stuff on the UCU dispute:

The University Worker: 20th March 2023

by The University Worker // Keep the strikes going!

notesfrombelow.org

UCU Democracy

by Royal Holloway Early Career Academics // Spectators or Actors?

notesfrombelow.org

Also links to this very detailed article about the earlier pause:

The Pause, and UCU decision-making

What’s going on? Step into “UCU Twitter” and other spaces since the pause in #ucuRISING strike action was announced to members on Friday evening and you quickly find confusion, worry, and attempts …

vickyblakeucu.uk

 

[teqniq]

 

[hitmouse]

Would be interested to hear what RMT members on here think of it? I suppose the numbers involved in the vote are pretty impressive, definitely seems like Sunak and co are still a long way off from being able to break the union.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Would be interested to hear what RMT members on here think of it? I suppose the numbers involved in the vote are pretty impressive, definitely seems like Sunak and co are still a long way off from being able to break the union.

They don't appear to be mentioning the other stuff (T&Cs being attacked) so I'm guessing that must have been resolved and what was being voted on was the pay rise.