Problems connecting to this site couldn't have come at a worse time than last night, so of course that's when it happened. I wasn't able to post anything from last night's excellent fringe meeting in support of the campaign to win Karen Reissmann's reinstatement.

And I wasn't able to provide an update on the latest situation with the pay debate. Apparently the Standing orders Committee met yesterday afternoon and ruled out of order the motion from the SGE which sought to facilitate the conference making a recommendation in a consultative ballot. Whether there were problems with the wording of the motion or not, the motion clearly sought to acheive the will of both the SGE and the conference. Refusing to allow it on the agenda leaves the SGE putting a motion which does not represent our position at all - since it would result in the ballot going out with no recommendation.

While UNISON health delegates ponder their decision on the three year pay offer from health workers, the new issue of the Nursing Times is published today with details of their online survey.

It shows that 71% of the 2400 people who took part don't want this deal.

Obviously this is just a quick snapshot but given that band 5 nurses are amongst the groups who stand to do the best, it is indicative that healthworkers do recognise a pay cut when they see one.

At the meeting tonight organised by Manchester Community and Mental Health Unison, Graham Pink spoke eloquently about his sacking 17 years ago for whistleblowing.

So the lunchtime SGE meeting, which was supposed to be a quick five minutes to take vote on the pay offer, managed to fill the entire lunchbreak.
We firstly voted on whether we wanted there to be a recommendatiom given to members, and there was an overwhelming majority in favour of making a recommendation.

However, when we took a named vote on whether that recommendation should be for acceptance or rejection of the pay offer the vote was tied at 19-19. As one of the officers commented this put us in something of a constitutional crisis. I suggested that the SGE put both accept and reject positions to the conference and allow conference to decide. This seemed to me to be better than the officers' suggestion of putting a motion which makes no recommendation at all.

The first session of the unison health conference has agreed to organise activities to defend the NHS from privatisation throughout this, its 60th year. We have also agreed to campaign against marketisation in primary care, and to respond assertively to the Darzi Report.

Some very good speches from branch delegates with experience of fighting outsourcing of admin and clerical jobs demonstrate that on the ground union reps are having some significant success in this area.

Motions 1 to 7 have all been passed, together with the relevant amendments, except for motion 4 which fell because no regional delegate from the Northern region was available to move it.

Unison health conference gets underway tomorrow morning. So we're here in Manchester - yes, it's raining - preparing for a hugely important pay debate which will take place on Tuesday.

Today we had a meeting of the Service Group Executive. Although the meeting was scheduled for ninety minutes we actually spent three and a half hours in discussions, almost all of that time devoted to the proposed three year deal.

Mike Jackson presented the proposals, and presented the officers' view that we should recommend members accept the three year deal. In the debate which followed I read out some of the emails I'd received from members in the East Midlands - almost all of whom thought we should reject the proposal. I also argued the government's threats of reducing or staging the PRB recommendation amounted to bullying behaviour and that therefore we should stand up to them. Crucially I said that we had a duty to give a lead to the rest of the union. I criticised the argument that our members "lacked the bottle" for a strike, saying that the crucial question was whether we, the SGE, had the nerve to lead a fight. We had a duty as the elected leadership to give a lead. While there were no guarantees of victory if we rejected the offer I thought that some SGE members were being too pessimistic. Without a fight then we were condemning ourselves to a three year pay cut.

UNISON's Service Group Executive elections start this week, with voting up until May 16th. In the East Midlands I am standing (again) for the General Seat, and giving my support to Sharon Vasselin from Nottingham University Hospitals UNISON Branch for the Female Seat.

We've done a joint election leaflet and this is it. If you are a UNISON member working in the health service in the East Midlands, please vote for us.

Livng outside of London, we are often quite cut off from the "left scene" which is very much centred on life in the capital. I hadn't even realised that Greg Tucker was ill and it came as a massive shock to hear a couple of days ago that he had died.

Now that I've got five minutes to write something by way of a tribute, I find that everything I would have written has already been said by others; people who knew him better or longer than I did.

The assorted leaderships of the NHS unions have demonstrated today why we're in the mess we are over NHS pay. As late as Friday afternoon there was little hard information available about this year's pay proposals, yet by Monday morning, UNISON and the RCN had apparently negotiated a proposal not just for this year but for next year and the year after as well.

If the proposals even came close to reaching UNISON's stated policy of an above-inflation pay rise for all NHS staff then this might have been worth the conflict with the other unions, the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament, but it doesn't. It falls so far short as to be shockingly bad - a below inflation, real terms pay cut for this year, followed by two more below inflation, real terms pay cuts to come.

Finally a small piece of good news from Iran, where trade unionist Mahmoud Salehi has finally been freed from the City of Sanandaj‘s central prison, where he had finished one-year jail term for his labour activities on March 23, 2008 but the authorities had refused to release him until today.

Congratulation and many thanks to all labour, progressive and human rights’ organizations and activists who have supported Salehi and called for his freedom and that of other jailed labour activists.

More details can be found on the website of the International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran.