Children's Play Area Designs: UNISON members show some BIG love

It’s Valentine’s Day, the day we all demonstrate and declare our love.

And this year, it comes right in the middle of Heart Unions week, an annual celebration of trade unions and all they stand for.

UNISON has been adding its own distinctive flavour to events today by also showing and sharing our love for public services, for the public service champions who provide them, and for fair pay!

Scotland saw Valentine’s Day protests against councils’ plans to cut services and jobs, calling on the public to ‘show their love for public services’ in Moray, West Lothian, Aberdeenshire … in fact across the country.

In Wales, local government and public services minister Alun Davies – a member of the UNISON Assembly Member group – took the opportunity to show his support for the Heart Unions week…

… while Carmarthenshire branch was just one of many branches using the week to raise UNISON’s profile and recruit new members.

In North West England, UNISON members gathered at a Salford care home as part of the union’s Care Workers for Change campaign in the region.

They were joined by Salford mayor Paul Dennett and the regional TUC at the Pemberton Fold home, to thank care workers for the hard work they do looking after vulnerable care workers and call on Community Integrated Care, the charity which runs the home, to recognise the union.

A similar scene took place in Stockport, where Care Workers for Change took to the pavement outside Borough Care Ltd, to declare “We care workers” and talk to the workers in the cold…

They were not the only workers showing their love on 14 February, as they ‘hearted’ UNISON and unions in general.

In Liverpool, metro mayor Steve Rotheram joined the UNISON branch at Liverpool city region combined authority to show his support …

… and members at Bolton Children’s Centres made their feeling clear.

In Nottingham, UNISON East Midlands members ran a stall at the QMC, gathering ‘wonderful’ messages from staff and public alike, calling on the government to fund a real pay rise for all public service workers.

The South West saw a Valentine’s Day protest at Gloucestershire Hospital to highlight the trust’s plans to outsource workers to a wholly owned subsidiary company.