UNISON ballot over pay award

UNISON, the largest union of health and social services workers in Northern Ireland, has begun to ballot members for industrial action over the ongoing failure to put in place a pay award that maintains pay parity and implements commitments made to pay the Real Living Wage.

Commenting on the opening of the ballot, UNISON Regional Secretary Patricia McKeown said:

‘‘Tens of thousands of UNISON members working across health and social services are being denied the pay award that has been promised to them, unacceptably caught in the middle of a budget stalemate between Stormont and Westminster.

Repeated commitments have been made to pay parity and to implement the Real Living Wage for the lowest paid workers across health and social services. As a union we have been calling for the impasse on our members’ pay to be resolved for months, but there has been no effective action to do so from the Health Minister and wider Executive.

This failure to put pay right for the workers that are the backbone of an utterly vital public service cannot stand. Enough is enough.

Our ballot runs until 1st December and over the next three weeks, we are calling on all UNISON members who receive their ballot paper to immediately vote yes for industrial action.

It’s time to send a clear message that the promises made to health and social services workers on their pay must be kept.’’