11th December 2022
Postal workers – on strike due to intransigent management
There are 50,000 vacancies for nurses across Britain. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is about to embark on the first days of industrial action in its history, planned for the 15th and 20th December. The RCN are asking for inflation plus 5% in their pay claim, to address the cost of living crisis and to get to a decent wage level for nurses to stop the outflow from the profession. As it stands Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, is refusing to meet nurses leaders to discuss pay.
Quite apart from the long hours, variable shifts and often emotionally draining nature of nursing as a profession, the fact is that nurses in many parts of the country are having to resort to using food banks to make ends meet. Having been applauded on doorsteps, including 10, Downing Street, as heroes throughout the COVID 19 pandemic, nurses are now engaged in struggle alongside many others to make a decent living.
Intransigence on the part of management, in the face of the legitimate demands of rail workers, is resulting in further transport disruption over Xmas and the New Year. As usual the supine BBC ran the headline that rail workers union RMT had refused an 8% pay offer from management. Quite apart from the offer being well below inflation at 11%+ anyway, and being tied to unacceptable changes in working practices, the offer was over two years. Not quite the headline the media want the public to believe.
Postal workers face similar issues with management insisting that any deal on pay has to be tied to changes to work practices, with the unions justifiably pointing out that working practices have been changed and it is only failings on the part of management that are resulting in them being forced to take action.
Royal Mail management have taken to social and traditional media channels to accuse the Communications Workers Union (CWU) of bullying tactics on picket lines, in the hope of breaking union and public support for the postal workers action. The strike action arises from the management of Royal Mail unilaterally reneging on an agreement reached with trade unions last year to deliver what the CWU described as “an historic pension solution, a mutual interest driven relationship and a joint vision for a successful postal service with social aims.”
Over 70,000 university staff at 150 universities took strike action for three days in November over attacks on pay, working conditions and pensions. The National Union of Students (NUS) has backed the strikes, which will be the biggest ever to hit UK universities and could impact 2.5 million students. The University and College Union (UCU) has said that further disruption can be avoided if employers make improved offers. If not, strike action will escalate in the New Year alongside a marking and assessment boycott.
In relation to pay and working conditions, the union’s demands include a meaningful pay rise to deal with the cost of living crisis and action to end the use of insecure contracts. Employers imposed a pay rise worth just 3% this year following over a decade of below inflation pay awards. A third of academic staff are on some form of temporary contract.
In relation to pensions, UCU is demanding employers revoke recent cuts and restore benefits. The package of cuts made earlier this year will see the average member lose 35% from their guaranteed future retirement income. For those at the beginning of their careers the losses are in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. This is at a time when the university sector generated record income of over £40 billion last year.
Further action is likely in the New Year with junior doctors having been given the go ahead to ballot for strike action in January, after the government failed to meet the British Medical Associations (BMA) demand for pay restoration to 2008/9 levels. Junior doctors have experienced real-term pay cuts of more than a quarter of their salaries since 2008/9. The Government this year gave junior doctors a 2% pay uplift, excluding them from the higher 4.5% pay uplift for other NHS workers which the BMA says is ‘still derisory’ given the ongoing cost of living crisis and following the COVID pandemic.
Two-thirds of trainee doctors responding to a recent General Medical Council survey said they ‘always’ or ‘often’ felt worn out at the end of a working day. The BMA said it is ‘deeply concerned’ that continuing pay erosion will drive doctors out of the profession at a time of record backlogs and when the NHS ‘can least stand to lose them’. The union believes the lack of a fair pay deal will lead to ‘a vicious cycle of crippling staffing shortages and worse patient care’.
Rather than looking to address the legitimate demands of workers across a wide range of sectors, Downing Street has set up a dedicated unit to coordinate its response over the waves of action, fearing a repeat of the “winter of discontent” of 1978-79, as the crisis grows. The Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden has been delegated by Rishi Sunak to plan for how the government responds to growing industrial unrest.
Already the army have been put on alert to act as scabs in order to try and break disputes. The government has said that military personnel, civil servants and volunteers are being trained to scab in a range of services, including Border Force at airports and ports.
A statement from Number 10 claims that the decision on whether troops would be deployed has yet to be taken, but that personnel “are part of the range of options available should strike action in these areas go ahead as planned”.
The government have a dilemma in that the usual tropes about greedy strikers and manipulative union leaders will not wash with a public who are directly engaged in industrial action, suffering from the cost of living crisis and are themselves, in many cases, resorting to foodbanks for survival. As the strike movement gathers momentum there is scope for the TUC to add to the government’s isolation by greater co-ordination of strike action. Positive support from the Labour leadership would also do no harm.
Clearly, the government sees the unrest as an arena for confrontation rather than negotiation. It does not see the wave of demands for fair pay as evidence of its own failings or as an endemic flaw in capitalism as a system. The government’s “dedicated unit” will be dedicated, as ever, to defending the interests of the class it represents and in making sure that its power and privileges are protected.
Avanti Populo 