I hope that tomorrow's Special Conference of UNISON's Local Government Service Group will endorse proposals for a strike ballot to continue the campaign we started with last year's strike. My local branch AGM - which was well attended - unanimously endorsed this approach following debate.
The alternative proposition - which is that we embark upon a consultative ballot on the Government proposals without even considering what recommendation to make to members in that ballot (beyond warning them that if they reject them we can go no further through negotiation) makes a nonsense of the Service Group Executive(SGE) having called a special conference in the first place.
Why bring us all to the Ally Pally and then not ask us to decide about anything? At least in 1997 we had a vote on whether or not to recommend the Single Status deal to members in a ballot.
I only hope that the SOC allow proposals for a recommendation to be put in any consultative ballot on to the Agenda - though I am worried about what I hear on this score.
A consultative ballot with no recommendation amounts to an indication to the membership that we are giving up on the question of protection for scheme members losing out - the issue which we put at centre stage when we took strike action last year.
That would be foolish.
Indeed Jon the whole thing smells of a stitch up to sell us a deal. The Buletins have bene goigng down this route for a while. I can imagine a sisutation where we are given a couple of extra years ptrotection maybe protection of the 5% rate and then told the alternative is to strike until kingdom come. And all this before we even have a pay rise sorted as well grrrrrr
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