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Veteran trade union activist Tony Staunton was disgracefully expelled from his Unison trade union last week following more than six months of suspension as branch secretary of the Plymouth council branch.

Just over 100 people attended a public sector pay rally in Manchester last week jointly organised by the PCS, CWU and Unison unions.

The ballot for strike action to defend leading health union activist Karen Reissmann – who has been suspended from her job as a psychiatric nurse – is tapping into a wider mood of anger at the Manchester mental health trust that employs her.

Dozens of Unison union members lobbied Greenwich council in south London last week against attacks on their working conditions and wages caused by single status proposals.

Campaigners to defend Yunus Bakhsh, the leading Unison union and health service activist, have obtained several important documents that detail exchanges between his employer and his union.

A very slight improvement to the government’s pay offer to more than a million NHS staff has been enough to persuade the leadership of the Unison union to put plans for industrial action on hold.

The battle to defend Karen Reissmann, the psychiatric nurse and health service union activist, is set to reach a critical stage this week as her Unison union starts a ballot for strike action in her defence.

Health workers Unions across the health service are moving closer to action over pay. Mike Jackson, lead negotiator of the Unison union, which has 450,000 members in the NHS, said, "Health workers feel a strong sense of injustice that the government has welched on a deal and is trying to impose a pay award that represents a pay cut in real terms.

The attempt by the Unison union to discipline Yunus Bakhsh, one of its best known left wing activists, continues to force the union’s leadership into some tortuous manoeuvres.

Around 30 trade unionists from across the south west of England assembled to lobby the panel hearing the disciplinary charges against leading Unison member Tony Staunton.

The campaign to defend Karen Reissmann, the psychiatric nurse and Unison union activist who has been suspended from work, is continuing to gain support.

The pressure for a decent pay rise for more than a million workers in the NHS rose this week as Unison, the biggest health service union, announced it would ballot its members for action unless the government improved its paltry 2.5 percent pay offer.