What happens now
The NHS Staff Council met to make a decision on NHS pay in England. The majority of NHS workers and their unions, including UNISON, voted to accept the pay offer.
UNISON members voted decisively to accept the NHS pay offer in England, with 73% of members who voted in the consultation choosing to accept.
It has taken months of strike action to force this from the government, but this decision means we finally have a deal.
UNISON has called for this to be implemented as soon as possible. Employers say they expect that to pay the money in June, as it is too late for this month’s payroll. The exact date will depend on your usual payday, as this can differ by employer.
For more info on the deal and what it means for you, check our webpage and pay calculator here:
What this means for our dispute
It was the actions of UNISON members that voted for and took industrial action that forced the government to get around the table and make an offer that would more than double the cash value of your 2022 pay award as well as permanently increasing your salary by 5% from April 2023.
As UNISON members have now voted to accept the offer, and NHS Staff Council has confirmed this, our formal dispute with the government over NHS pay for 2022/23 has come to an end.
Pay for 2023/24 has also been settled without you having to wait many more months for a Pay Review Body process to complete.
It should never have had to come to this to get ministers to listen. But what this has show is that industrial action works and that direct negotiation works.
The campaign to Put NHS Pay Right continues
Over the course of this dispute our union has grown stronger than ever before, with more members joining and more of you getting actively involved in our campaigning. Now we need to build on that strength going forward to end the staffing crisis and protect the NHS for the future.
That means making sure that UNISON remains a ballot-ready union, improving our systems and building on what we’ve learned so we can take bigger industrial action if that once again becomes necessary.
We will continue to push the government on pay, no matter how hostile they can be. That includes using the commitment they gave to review the whole process that sets NHS pay awards to push for meaningful changes.
But most importantly, we need to strengthen our organising in every single workplace up and down the country, recruiting more of your colleagues to our union and working locally to improve pay and conditions.
There’s so much still to do. We need you and your colleagues to help expand our campaign on re-banding, making sure that all NHS staff are on the right band and getting the right pay for the work they do. And to campaign on overtime pay, so that everyone gets the pay they are owed. And that’s just to start with.
There’s never been a better time to get more involved in UNISON. Why not contact your local branch to find out more about more about what’s going on, or even consider becoming a rep?