Unison health SGE takes soundings on pay

Unison health conference gets underway tomorrow morning. So we're here in Manchester - yes, it's raining - preparing for a hugely important pay debate which will take place on Tuesday.

Today we had a meeting of the Service Group Executive. Although the meeting was scheduled for ninety minutes we actually spent three and a half hours in discussions, almost all of that time devoted to the proposed three year deal.

Mike Jackson presented the proposals, and presented the officers' view that we should recommend members accept the three year deal. In the debate which followed I read out some of the emails I'd received from members in the East Midlands - almost all of whom thought we should reject the proposal. I also argued the government's threats of reducing or staging the PRB recommendation amounted to bullying behaviour and that therefore we should stand up to them. Crucially I said that we had a duty to give a lead to the rest of the union. I criticised the argument that our members "lacked the bottle" for a strike, saying that the crucial question was whether we, the SGE, had the nerve to lead a fight. We had a duty as the elected leadership to give a lead. While there were no guarantees of victory if we rejected the offer I thought that some SGE members were being too pessimistic. Without a fight then we were condemning ourselves to a three year pay cut.

Eventually the SGE decided that we couldn't yet reach a decision because some members wished to consult further with their region's delegates. We broke up with no decision made and a plan to meet again tomorrow lunchtime to decide our position.

So off I ran to the East Midlands meeting where, I am pleased to report, there was overwhelming opposition to the offer and a clear commitment to organising members to vote for - and take - whatever action proves necessary. As a result all three of our regional representatives on the SGE will be voting tomorrow to recommend to conference that we encourage members to reject the three year offer.

In the actual conference tomorrow we will be debating our response to the Darzi report, in which I get to make my one speech of the conference, proposing an amendment from the SGE seeking to toughen up our reaction to Darzi. Regular readers of this blog will remember that this amendment is the only one from the SGE not drafted by the officers (I wrote it) so I'm hoping I do it justice.

We will also hear from two invited guests and debate cleaner hospitals but I think a lot of attention will be fixed on the SGE meeting at lunchtime.

In the evening Kate and I are both looking forward to attending the fringe meeting on whistleblowing featuring Karen Reissmann. If you're in Manchester please come along: 7.15pm at the Radisson Hotel.