Now -read the book!

Here is a link to my memoirs which, if you are a glutton for punishment, you can purchase online at https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/an-obscure-footnote-in-trade-union-history.
Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name. (William Morris - A Dream of John Ball)

Monday, October 13, 2014

Local Government Pay - the missing link...



Health workers who are being encouraged to campaign for fair pay can read on the UNISON website how much the pay freeze has made them worse off by using our pay calculator.

Until very recently the same facility was available for local government workers – and branches such as West Sussex quite properly and admirably linked to the calculator on their websites as they campaigned as the national union was encouraging them to, for members to take action on 14 October.

Just now though – if you follow the link the local government pay calculator it appears to be broken.

I’m sure that this is just due to some Gremlins (perhaps someone fed them after midnight?)

After all, our Union would not be so disrespectful of our own members as to take down such a pay calculator precisely at the point in time at which, having suspended strike action, we are about to consult our members on a set of pay proposals which have faced widespread opposition.

That would be unthinkable.

I look forward to blogging about the restoration of this missing link!

Update at 16.26 - I am pleased to report that the calculator is back online (see the comments on this post). As I am not slow to criticise I won't be slow to thank colleagues at the UNISON Centre for the speed with which this has been sorted out.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Jon

As the new Digital Manager at UNISON I'm very glad you found the calculator a useful tool - and missed it when it was gone!

I asked for the calculator to be taken down after the suspension was announced, as it had lots of messages about the 14th October. The plan was to put it back - but it has been a little busy here with the NHS action (which I think was a great success, by the way - I would be interested to hear your views on how we handled things on the online side). Your blog was a good reminder: I'm pleased to say the link has now been restored and any council and school worker can again find out what they've missed - and hopefully be convinced to come along to the TUC demo this Saturday to make their voices felt.

Thanks again for the prompt!

Nick Scott (only a very part time Gremlin, honest)

Jon Rogers said...

Thanks Nick! Excellent news that the calculator is back - some members certainly value such online content (we had something similar which was very popular during the 2011 pension dispute).

From what I've been able to see whilst working today (and standing in the rain this morning) the live blog for today's strike action was very helpful - I'm sure members in health would appreciate regular updates about the impact of this week's action short of strike action as well!