On Tuesday physiotherapists across the UK voted for the first time ever to strike. They have joined the long queue to the picket lines of rail workers, nurses and other NHS staff, airport passport officials, postal and fire workers, and school staff, in a wave of industrial action unprecedented since the 1978-79 “winter of discontent” which helped bring down James Callaghan’s Labour Government.
One million days are expected to be lost to strikes in December, as workers attempt to claw back a decade of eroding living standards – the worst for average wage growth since the Napoleonic wars. With inflation running at a 41-year high of 11 per cent, pay growth in the public service has been held this year at only 2.2 per cent, four points behind the private sector. Nurses’ real pay fell by £1,800 over the year.
Recruitment and retention crises are making the restoration of living standards all the more urgent. The fall in pay rates and worsening of working conditions in hospitals have contributed to a flight from the sector to the point that there are currently 133,000 unfilled – and some say unfillable – vacancies in the health service. And recent train chaos has also been blamed on the shortage of drivers. Labour shortages, attributable to low pay but also post-Brexit migration curbs, run through the economy from hospitality, to care, and agriculture.
Not surprisingly nurses and rail workers are enjoying significant public support. Six in 10, polls suggest, back the nurses, while more than half of those polled support rail workers, despite the real pain being inflicted on commuters and pre-Christmas travellers.
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The response of the Conservative Government resembles something from the Thatcher-era playbook. Minister in the Cabinet Office Nadhim Zarhawi has tried to demonise the strikers as bringing succour to Vladimir Putin, and the government is training 600 soldiers to take on “emergency” roles in ambulances and passport control. Anti-strike legislation is being prepared, although it might not pass the House of Lords.
While Scottish health workers have agreed to accept a 7.5 per cent offer, well short of inflation, negotiations in the rest of the UK are being stymied by the refusal of ministers to meet unions, under the pretext that public sector pay determination is a matter for independent review boards or train companies.
But, as a leaked government letter to the NHS review board says, these boards must “have regard to the government’s inflation target when forming recommendations”.
The reality that key workers have had enough, their clear determination, and the retention crises, make it crucial that Rishi Sunak’s government finds a pragmatic path away from confrontation.