So the lunchtime SGE meeting, which was supposed to be a quick five minutes to take vote on the pay offer, managed to fill the entire lunchbreak.
We firstly voted on whether we wanted there to be a recommendatiom given to members, and there was an overwhelming majority in favour of making a recommendation.

However, when we took a named vote on whether that recommendation should be for acceptance or rejection of the pay offer the vote was tied at 19-19. As one of the officers commented this put us in something of a constitutional crisis. I suggested that the SGE put both accept and reject positions to the conference and allow conference to decide. This seemed to me to be better than the officers' suggestion of putting a motion which makes no recommendation at all.

In the end my friend and colleague Karen Reissmann made an even better proposal. The SGE will seek to put two emergency motions to the conference: a 'neutral' one outlining the proposal and committing us to hold an all-member consultative ballot, and a second much shorter motion drafted by Karen which, if passed, would instruct the chair to conduct an immediate card vote which would determine whether the conference wished to recommend accepting or rejecting the offer.

I think this was a good way out of a difficult position, and I hope conference delegates make the most of this opportunity to give a clear lead to the rest of the union. But I am disappointed that so many of my SGE colleagues, who have spoken eloquently about the shortcomings in the offer, then went on to vote to accept it because they doubted that the membership could deliver the necessary industrial action to win anything better. As I have written before I think the limitations in unison's campaigning are more to do with the quality of leadership than the determination of our members. For now, however, conference will decide, which seems to me to be entirely appropriate.