U.K.
Thousands of members of public service union Unison working for further education colleges joined a national strike over pay on 24 February. The workers, including librarians, technicians, cleaners and caretakers, joined college lecturers to protest against employers' aim to freeze pay. With several years of below-inflation pay increases, a pay freeze this year would mean some workers seeing a 17% fall in their purchasing power.
Read more at > Unison
Support staff working in universities have rejected a proposed pay freeze while those working in colleges of further education have also rejected a 1% pay offer. University support staff point to the work they have been doing over the last nine months to maintain services and ensure safety and a dispute and industrial action are in prospect. Meanwhile further education staff say that their pay has fallen by 30% in real terms since 2009 and that there is a need to address a major pay disparity with the school sector.
The three unions representing 150,000 local government workers in Scotland (UNISON, GMB and Unite) have reacted angrily to the employers’ rejection of their 3% pay claim and the proposal to freeze pay in 2010-2011. This follows the approach of the employers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who have also demanded a pay freeze for the 1.5 million workers covered in the other main local government agreement. Read more at > UNISON (EN)
