I hope everyone is well and bearing up under the strain of the cost of living crisis, UNISON is fighting with you and for you! Our recent strike action certainly helped to bring our standard of living slump into focus and to the attention of government!

These issues and any battle over pay and conditions, are rarely resolved overnight, and we have to remain steadfast in our commitment and belief in our actions. To this end, I thought it would be timely to provide members with some stats that might help to win people over, when talking to them about why we are taking Industrial Action (and hopefully to recruit new members too!).

As a branch, we are signed up to the Labour Research Dept. (LRD), and receive lots of information about employment trends, new laws and regulations, as well as articles from many affiliated organisations giving the benefit of their experiences.

The link below is to the most recent inflation trends and pay settlements, which makes for interesting reading!

Pay & bargaining news | LRD

The big take aways for me were:

• RPI is steady at around 14%, with CPI a bit lower (noting that RPI is probably more relevant to members).
• Median pay settles (negotiated by unions and through industrial action, are at nearly 6%, which puts our claim into perspective.
• Despite rising pay settlements (generally), the standard of living gap is still increasing (2.5% on median), so where does that leave us?

There is no doubt that not only do we deserve a fair pay settlement, but that it is there to be won and we must remain resolute! If we, got a settlement to the median, it would represent an additional rise of more than twice what we have been offered to date!

In solidarity

Mike.