The South Western Branch of Unison will be balloting our members in May over the latest pay proposals. Our Branch Executive meeting, held in Tanton on 23rd April, was dedicated to the subject of the proposals, and representatives spent the day discussing how best to represent our members on this matter.

As part of the 2007/2008 pay settlement, parties undertook to continue talks to see whether a multi-year pay 'deal' could be agreed. These talks started in September 2007. Talks stalled in early 2008 but very recently the Government made a fresh offer which kick-started a series of negotiations. These concluded on Friday 4th April 2008.  The resulting proposed agreement will now be the subject of consultation with all unions whose members are covered by the Agenda for Change agreement - and that of course includes UNISON members.

 The proposed agreement, should it be accepted, will be worth 8.1% over 3 years. The agreement would run for the years 2008/2009, 2009/2010 and 2010/2011.

As a branch, we are now urgently seeking your views on this. Get in touch with us.

To Download a "Q&A" document on this subject from this site, click here.  For more detail of the proposals, read on...

The proposals are structured as follows:

 Year 1

All pay points in the year starting on the 1st April 2008 would rise by 2.75%.

 Year 2

In the year starting 1st April 2009, all pay points would rise by a further 2.4%. However there would be some changes to the pay spine that would add 2.54% to the pay bill in total.

 These changes would be:

 ·         The abolition of the first pay point, raising the NHS minimum wage to £6.77.

·         Restructuring of pay points in Bands 5 and 6, providing:

  an additional 1.22% at point 19,

  an additional 1.79% at point 20,

  an additional 0.61% at point 23,

  an additional 0,68% at point 24 and

  an additional 0.33% added to point 25, which is the top of Band 5/third point of Band 6. 

 Year 3

From 1st April 2010 all pay points would rise by a further 2.25%. However, there would be a flat rate increase of £420 for Bands 1, 2 and 3 and some further changes to the pay spine that would add 2.5% to the pay bill in total.

 These changes would include the reduction in the number of pay points in Band 5 from 9 to 8 pay points. The consequence of this would be to add additional monies to points 19, 20, 23, 24 and 25 that year and again in the year 2011/2112.

Other Details

There are some non-pay elements in the proposed agreement, including a draft new Trade Union facilities agreement and a new policy on Improving Working Lives and well-being at work. There is also a 're-opener' clause in the proposed agreement that allows unions to give evidence to the NHS Pay Review Body if there are concerns of worsening labour market conditions or economic factors such as inflation rising, during the three-year period of this agreement.