“See you on the picket line, comrades,” says a blogger on Labourhome.org.uk, responding to the latest vote to strike taken by Unison’s 600,000 members. The public sector union that counts refuse collectors, librarians, teaching assistants and dinner ladies among its members, claims the action planned for 16-17 July is the first in a series of “sustained strikes” by council workers unhappy with a 2.45% pay offer.
That sounds like bad news, but worse is the fact that Unison doesn’t look like its going to be alone in calling for strikes this summer. As Sean O’Grady notes in The Independent, the Public and Commercial Services Union plans to ballot 280,000 civil servants unhappy with the Government’s 2% pay cap on Ministers and has threatened to co-ordinate strike action with Unison. And unions representing 250,000 college staff have rejected a 3% pay offer – they want double – while the Fire Brigade Union has threatened industrial action if pay talks next month are not concluded to their satisfaction. Get ready for a summer of discontent, says James Clapman in the Daily Mail.
But why, asks Gregor Gall in The Guardian, are local government workers suddenly threatening strikes now when their NHS colleagues accepted a similar pay deal only a few weeks ago? Part of the answer lies with Shell’s tanker drivers – their success in extracting a 14% pay deal over two years “has shown what can be achieved”. On top of that, expectations of much higher UK inflation – a consumer price index rate of 4.3% in a year’s time – are becoming cemented in UK consumers’ minds.
As a result, Unison General Secretary Dave Prentis has been urging his “low-paid members” who can see “bread and butter prices going through the roof” not to heed Alistair Darling’s pleas for “restraint”, especially given the “unfairness of boardroom bonanzas and big City bonuses”. Our members don’t want Gordon Brown to feel their pain, says Prentis, “they want him to stand up and heal their pain with fair pay increases”.
And that’s not all the unions want, says Jill Sherman in The Independent. There is a slew of other union demands out there, from Unite’s campaign to overturn the ban on secondary strikes by workers employed by the same firm, to the GMB’s calls for a more redistributive tax system.
So what will Brown do? asks Sherman. Take on the unions, or cave in and end up going “the same way as Jim Callaghan 30 years ago?” Expect the latter, says David Frost of the British Chamber of Commerce. Brown knows perfectly well that “the public finances are not strong enough to dish out any extra pay without further taxation to fund it”, but he isn’t exactly in a strong position right now. He is hugely unpopular already (71% of people say there is no way Labour can win the next election with him at the helm) and his party needs money very badly indeed.
Labour is in debt and there is a good chance that the auditors will refuse to sign off its accounts on 7 July. But the private sector has slammed its wallets shut, leaving him at the mercy of the union barons, who, as Daniel Martin notes in the Daily Mail, currently provide “£9 out every £10 received by Labour”. No wonder the unions are so “emboldened” – they know Labour Party finances are sunk without them. And that means they have a good chance of getting exactly what they want.