Library news

• Delegates back calls for improved pay and sick pay

  16-06-2022 14:43
  
  Moving a motion on the future of the national minimum wage on Thursday morning, Linda Hobson of the Northern region started by looking back to the opening motion of national delegate conference on Tuesday – UNISON at 30 – and how it had looked at the union’s successes.
  One of those successes, she told delegates, “must be the implementation of the national minimum wage under the last Labour government.
  “Our gen sec at the time, Rodney Bickerstaffe, was absolutel
  
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• ‘Democracy and peace are equal to bread and water’: Turkish trade unionists address conference

  16-06-2022 12:40
  
  Mehmet Bozgeyik, president of KESK, Turkish Confederation of Public Service Workers, delivered a passionate speech to UNISON’s national delegate conference this morning.
  Addressing the conference in Turkish, with translation from a colleague, he acknowledged that this was the first time he had been able to travel abroad in six years due to a travel ban imposed on the trade union activists.
  Hundreds of delegates raised ‘Free Gonul’ signs in solidarity with Gonul Erden, the Turki
  
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• Wealth inequality in the UK is ‘entrenched’ under the Tories

  16-06-2022 11:52
  
  Delegates at UNISON’s national conference have torn apart the UK government’s claims to be ‘levelling up’ the country.
  During a busy session yesterday afternoon, one delegate after another questioned the Tories’ plans, inclinations and ability to deliver equality.
  While expressing “deep scepticism and anger” at the government’s claim to be levelling up the country, the motion cited recent research that shows:Funding for levelling up pales in compar
  
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• UNISON commits to campaign for a national care service

  16-06-2022 11:39
  
  On the second day of UNISON’s national delegate conference, the union unanimously voted through a motion to campaign for a national care service.
  The COVID-19 pandemic has had a severe impact on the social care sector and care workers. Tens of thousands of elderly and disabled people have died from COVID-19 in care homes and other care settings across the UK since March 2020, and the death rate among care workers has been particularly high.
  UNISON believes that the UK needs a national care
  
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• ‘Now is the time for investment, not cuts’

  16-06-2022 11:21
  
  UNISON delegates yesterday turned the focus of the cost of living crisis squarely towards the solution – a “realistic windfall tax” on energy companies and greater taxation on the country’s wealthiest people.
  With inflation at its highest level for 30 years, a composite motion identified the combined effect on members’ lives of a cost of living that was ‘going through the roof’ and the decade-long stagnation in public sector pay.
  The motion also noted th
  
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• ‘This union is a green union’: UNISON commits to decarbonise public services

  16-06-2022 11:16
  
  Today, UNISON unanimously passed a motion on climate change at the 2022 national delegate conference.
  At COP26 in November 2021, UNISON launched a ground-breaking report on climate justice: Getting to Net Zero in Public Services: The Road to Decarbonisation.
  The report asserts that getting public services to net-zero will need £140 billion of government funding by 2035. Without significant and immediate government funding, public services that are still reeling from a decade of austerity w
  
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• Absence of sick pay for care workers shows system needs reform

  16-06-2022 01:04
  
  More than half of care workers employed in the private sector receive under £100 a week if they take time off sick, with many getting nothing at all, a ​UNISON survey reveals today (Thursday).
  The results highlight the precariousness of low-paid care staff in unstable employment who fear the consequences ​of taking time off when ill, the union says.
  Many ​who were poorly during the pandemic have had to use up savings, rack up credit card debt or use​ annua
  
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