Rishi Sunak needs an “exit strategy” from ongoing labor disputes to prevent them from escalating in the coming months after overestimating public support for his “1980s manual” approach to widespread strikes, the general secretary has said incoming from the TUC.
Paul Nowak, who takes over as Britain’s top union leader next month, predicted the government’s “war of attrition” against unions would fail and accused ministers of having their “hands over their ears” about the seriousness of the situation
He urged the government to negotiate fair pay deals as he ruled out rewriting the powers of pay review bodies for next year – which the government is believed to be considering – as a “starting point” for negotiations because public sector workers need more support. to deal with the UK’s cost of living crisis now.
In an interview with The Guardian before starting his new role, he said: “The government will have to take responsibility. The public will clearly identify where the responsibility lies.
“Maybe they’ll try to push it until the spring and until the budget, but I don’t think our members are going to sit back and wait for that to happen. I don’t think promises of tomorrow’s jam will cut it with people.”
Nowak’s intervention comes as the country faces a new wave of strikes in the new year, with rail, Border Force nursing and ambulance workers expected to take further action, so some parts of the public sector will stop. More strike days were lost in October than in a decade and union action has intensified since then.
Downing Street insisted on Wednesday that there was no need for the Prime Minister to get personally involved in the issue and that it was not for the government to get involved in the pay negotiations.
Deputy official spokesman Rishi Sunak said: “What we cannot do is allow double-digit wage increases that will incorporate inflation in the future… The Prime Minister wants employers and unions to reach a fair deal. We believe in terms of railway that there is a [offer] on the table that is there for the unions to come to an agreement”.
The new TUC leader rejected the Prime Minister’s claim that the country could not afford pay rises for public sector workers because of inflation, suggesting that business profits, dividends and council bonuses were responsible for rising – it Some unions have now indicated they could accept an improved wage deal below inflation.
“If you’re in the public service and you’re feeling a bit of pressure, it seems like the only solution the government is proposing is that it’s expected to show some pay moderation. You’re the one who’s supposed to be suffering. It doesn’t seem like this be a well-shared burden across the country,” he added.
The TUC is gearing up for a second battle with the government in early January as ministers prepare to push anti-strike legislation through parliament, which would guarantee minimum levels of service on transport networks, and potentially other services, during strikes.
Nowak warned that unions would be prepared to take legal action, all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, to guarantee workers’ right to strike. “We wouldn’t rule anything out, I think we’re ready to take it on politically and legally,” he said.
“Potentially for us it is a claim to the ECtHR. We will leave no legal stone unturned. We will have to see what the real proposals are, but I think there would be a real appetite among our unions to take on the government in the halls.”
The TUC chief said he believed “everything was up for grabs” as he urged ministers to sit down with union leaders and negotiate a fair deal. This should be “something that recognizes that there is a particular set of pressures on people at the moment”, he added, pointing to private sector companies that had offered lump sum payments, reopened wage negotiations and advanced pay rises .
However, he ruled out the government focusing on simply changing the remit of pay review bodies next year, as ministers have hinted they might do, as it did not address the urgency of the situation. And he criticized them for “hiding behind” the bodies for this year’s below-inflation deals, despite them setting the mandate.
“I don’t think that just looking at next year’s competitions would be an acceptable starting point. The reality is that our public service members are facing real pressures on household incomes right now.
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“I don’t think our members can wait that long and I don’t think they’re prepared to sit through the budget and then any pay review process after that to try and get a decent pay result.”
Nowak suggested Sunak, a millionaire, and his cabinet failed to understand the pressures people faced during the cost-of-living crisis. “I don’t think it’s just him. We have a cabinet of people who don’t depend on public services in a way that the vast majority of people do. Do they send their children to public schools? Do they depend on public hospitals? Wealth can isolate from many things.”
Analysis by the TUC shows that UK workers have lost an average of £20,000 in real wages since 2008 because pay did not keep up with inflation – the equivalent of £1,450 a year. The pay cut has been even worse for some, with nurses losing the equivalent of £42,000, or £3,000 a year, and paramedics £56,000, or £4,000 a year.
There is more pay misery ahead with average earnings estimated to fall by £79 a month in real terms by 2023, and public sector pay by £100 a month, with pay levels not expected to recover at the level of 2008. until 2027.
Nowak defended the union’s campaign for the national minimum wage, which is currently £9.50 and rises to £10.42 in April, to rise to £15 an hour as soon as possible as part of wages which increase throughout the piece. Nowak claimed the proposal was “very realistic” after being told the target of reaching two-thirds of median income was too ambitious but would be achieved by April 2024.
Recent polls suggest that more people blame the government than unions for the wave of strikes, with support for NHS workers particularly high. “They thought this was a playbook from the ’80s where they could drive a wedge between groups of working people,” Nowak said.
“They overestimated the level of support they would have on this and that’s part of the reason they now have to think: What is our exit strategy? They have their hands over their ears at the moment, refusing to listen to what they are called by their own staff, the public servants”.
He defended rail unions, despite falling public support for RMT action, and accused the government of “sabotaging” a deal by making driver-only trains an 11th-hour precondition of any deal when it would be impossible to achieve during the existing life span. franchises
“It was deliberately provocative and, I think, deliberately designed to undermine any potential deal … There’s no way that’s possible and the government knows it,” he said.
The TUC has had “no contact” with Sunak or other senior ministers, despite working together during the pandemic. “It seems far-fetched that we’re being invited to do bacon butts with Boris Johnson and his little dog. He didn’t learn, and the government didn’t learn, lessons about the value of working together to deal with a national crisis.”