Earlier this month, the newly elected Unison Health Service Group met in Birmingham over two days for our Annual General Meeting. As a newly elected member, this was my first meeting.
It is an honour to be representing not only Cumbria and North Lancashire, but also 74,656 members across the North West of England as your Regional Representative on the Executive.
This meeting took place just 10 days after a new government was formed and the HSGE was quick to reiterate the need to hold the new Labour government to it’s promises and get round the table as soon as possible on a number of issues.
A hot topic that our members will be waiting anxiously for updates on was obviously pay. As of the time the meeting took place, we were informed that the NHS Pay Review Body (NHSPRB) had finally finished its review, and recommendations were sent to the government. The recommended amount has not been released to unions and we agreed as an HSGE to convene an extraordinary meeting to discuss this once informed by government.
Despite this, UNISON’s goals are clear… Our members want a proper pay rise, the right banding and a shorter working week. We are a member lead union and these are the priorities set out by you, the members, when consulted.
We were told that up to 150,000 NHS workers are currently registered on ‘the bank’. Let’s get one thing clear, these workers are zero-hours workers and the backbone of our NHS. They deserve the same benefits and security of substantive members of staff. That is why we will be working closely with the government and Trusts across the country to secure the rights and recognition these workers deserve. To ensure this, we need our bank workers to become more involved in our union at branches. This is difficult as we know the majority of these are low paid women workers who can’t afford the time needed to attend and get involved. That is why we are looking at ways to make it easier for members to get involved.
The executive heard a report on our policy of insourcing campaigns for contractor members. As agreed by members at our conference and supported by the executive, we continue to push on with our 3 main points:
- Resist outsourcing
- Insourcing
- Pay parity
Finally, we discussed UNISON flagship policy of the creation of a National Care Service. We have fought from the ground up to ensure this policy was backed by Labour and it was a huge win to see it included in their manifesto. There are currently 152,000 vacancies in social care. This delays hospital discharges up to 24%. On top of this, it means our members in the private sector are constantly facing increased workloads. As social care comes under local government representation in many areas currently, we discussed an integrated way to progress going forward in Branches and as a whole union. Health care from cradle to grave is a basic human right and we will continue to fight for this across all sectors for our members and their families.
If any Branch in the North West Region would like to receive email reports from HSGE from me as your representative, please email me with your consent to do so at iain.mooney@mbht.nhs.uk