Several weeks overdue, the health service Pay Review Body finally made its recommendation to the government on 4 April — three days after the rise should have been implemented. The PRB recommended an increase of 2.75% — considerably below the current inflation rate of 4.1% (based on RPI).
As if this were not bad enough, health union officials then spent the weekend in talks with the government and to thrash out a three-year deal starting with the PRB’s recommended 2.75% in this year, followed by 2.4% next year and 2.25% the year after.
There is an option to re-open negotiations on the second two years’ pay amounts but only if the PRB considers that there has been a “significant and material change in recruitment and retention and wider economic and labour market conditions”. This is much more vague and woolly than the commitment the teaching unions had secured which the government reneged on last year.
Included in the deal are some other “non-pay” elements which will no doubt be used by the union bureaucracy to try and sell this deal to members. However, they are in most respects pretty poor, and in some important areas very dangerous.
Unison’s bid to abolish Band 1, the lowest pay band, has turned into an agreement to get rid of the bottom point. This move will of course, only benefit new starters on Band 1, as anyone working for more than a year will already have moved above it.
Unison’s proposals to reduce the number of incremental points in the pay bands has been reduced to cutting the points in Band 5 — which is the starting pay for qualified nurses — and a commitment to look at cutting the points in Band 6, but nothing on reducing the number of points in lower bands.
Most dangerous is that Unison’s long standing position of reducing the working week is now guaranteed to only be discussed within the context of talks on “productivity improvements”.
The government has declared that a three year deal is good because it enables health workers to plan ahead. The reality is that a three year deal is good for them because it gets beyond the next general election without the risk of a national dispute in the health service on pay.
Health workers must reject this pathetic deal and fight now for a pay rise above inflation.
The opportunities for united action across the public sector are huge, but the union bureaucracies are so keen to avoid any confrontation it will take a concerted effort from the ordinary membership of the union to push them into action.
The first step of that will come at Unison Health Conference in Manchester (14-16 April) where there will undoubtedly be emergency motions on this issue.
