Irish nurses, who held a campaign of ground-breaking industrial action last summer in support of a campaign for significant pay rises and a shorter working week , have agreed at their conference this week to ballot members for industrial action if upcoming talks with the Irish government do not generate a 10% pay rise.

Last year's dispute, which won a commitment from the Government to reduce the working week of nurses to the same as that of other health workers in Ireland and also a pay rise worth 10% over two years, was only ended on a very close vote to accept the offer.

As Leo Colston said, the past is a foreign country. But in these days of cheap international air travel, that shouldn't stop us visiting.  There's been a blogroll link for some time on 4glengate.net to the blog of Michael Walker, a former COHSE activist, which contains an archive of documents and reflections on the history and achievements of COHSE - the Confederation Of Health Service Employees. It's an impressive archive, and every health worker, every UNISON member, should spend some time reading up on it.

This morning, I've been thinking about the UNISON consultative ballot on the below-inflation-for-three-years NHS pay offer which is due to start this week. When we discussed the pay offer at UNISON health conference last month, and subsequently, according to reports from colleagues around the country, officers of UNISON and those lay members who want us to accept the offer have been at pains to stress that rejecting the offer would necessarily imply taking industrial action. Not just industrial action but sustained industrial action. I think that word is included just to pour scorn on those public sector workers who have already held a one day strike in support of their campaign for better pay, but scorn in such a situation is the chocolate pot calling the kettle black. At least, as many of my colleagues in Leicester keep telling me, the teachers are doing something. 

As I couldn't get down to London today for the lobby of Parliament, I've taken the unusual step of writing to my Tory MP, Edward Garnier. I don't often write to him, what with him being a Tory, and a lawyer and what with our last meaningful contact being me standing for Labour against him in 1997, but since I couldn't go in person to support Karen Reissmann, I figured that I shouldn't let him off the hook.

Thanks to the excellent 'write to them' website, I've just sent him this message... 

An email arrived this morning, while I was reading some interesting discussion on the fall-out from the elections and trying to work out how to make the unions move fast enough in the right direction to stave off a Tory victory at the next General Election. It didn't exactly inspire me, although I suppose it was supposed to.

It came from the Labour Party, and was titled, Campaigning events in your area. A good start, I thought, since the Labour Party has done eff all actual campaigning in my area for over a decade. So rather than assigning it to the spam folder, I read on, enthusiasm rapidly waning:

I don't usually draw much attention to the blogs that get added to 4glengate's blogroll. They just appear, somewhere in the middle of the list, and I hope that readers find them interesting or useful. However, I've just found (via Grimmer Up North, for which thanks go towards Hebden Bridge) the blog of National Union of Journalists' General Secretary, Jeremy Dear.

Now I already knew Jeremy was a "good bloke", having heard him speak at several events over the last few years, but his blog is excellent - blending the "what I've been doing" stuff which from a Gen Sec can actually be interesting if it isn't just a list of his speeches and articles, with some assessment and comment. Despite being a trade unionist in the public eye, Dear is willing to discuss negotiation meetings he's been to, pass comment on current events and campaigns, and generally use the blog as a means of communicating with his union's members.

Apparently there have been some elections, although not in our neck of the woods. Looks like we lost. They lost too. Meanwhile, here in Leicester we've had our own, much more painful defeat to worry about.

Latest information from UNISON is that unions representing a quarter of a million workers in Further Education have rejected a pay offer worth 2.5%:

According to the UNISON statement:

They are seeking a pay rise of 6% or £1,500 – whichever is the greater – to guarantee the lowest-paid workers a minimum wage of £7.38.

“We need a fairer deal for the low paid who can earn as little as £12,738 a year.”

Under the proposals for the three year NHS pay deal which is being put to UNISON members very soon in a consultation ballot, the starting salary for NHS staff in band 1 for the coming year will be £12,517.

Nurses and Health Care Assistants at two Derby hospitals have voted unanimously to reject proposals for downgrading them, and UNISON is now beginning the process of organising a formal industrial action ballot. This is a magnificent result and a real blow for the Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, who were hoping that opposition to their plans to save money at the expense of experienced and highly skilled staff would evaporate once the Royal College of Nursing gave up, which they did last month.

However, the UNISON ballot result confounds that completely. According to the BBC, UNISON balloted 290 nursing staff, and of the 170 who returned ballot papers every single one rejected the proposals, and 121 were in favour of strike action.

So it's May Day, a celebration of both the rebirth of life in the spring every year, which seemed like a miracle and something worth celebrating in years gone by, but now almost passes us by unnoticed if we don't pay some attention to the natural world around us, and also the international workers' movement.

It is worth reflecting on the historic struggles and events that led to May 1st being commemorated as a workers' holiday. But the historic, or almost pre-historic, roots of May Day as a celebration of spring are also important. As a far better writer than I has already made suitable encouragement for us to celebrate the rise of spring, and Walter Crane's illustration makes the point without needing (many) words, it just falls for me to wish all readers of 4glengate.net (and workers everwhere) a very happy May Day.

Up this morning to the usual routine of school and work. And a broken central heating boiler and no food in the fridge. Real life is great, innit?

Today's agenda, apart from work and trying to arrange a branch committee to discuss the pay offer also includes several meetings with members about sick reviews and disciplinaries. Talking to colleagues at conference it was clear that many NHS employers are adopting an increasingly tough approach to such issues, piling even more pressure on overworked and stressed workers.

I've received an email highlighting the inconsistency of the health conference voting to criticise last year's SGE decision not to make a recommendation on the pay offer and then endorsing the SGE motion this year resulting in a ballot being held with no recommendation.