Public sector strike plans show contempt for taxpayers

Front-line state workers deserve a decent pay rise, but union bosses risk pushing their luck too far

Nurses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are to strike for two days in December – their biggest walkout in NHS history. After ministers rejected nurses’ demands for a stonking 19pc pay rise, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) says it “has no choice”. While RCN nurses will provide emergency care on Dec 15 and 20, routine services will be hit.

NHS staff in England and Wales have been awarded a pay rise of at least £1,400 – about 4pc on average for nurses – with ministers following the recommendations of the independent NHS Pay Review Body. Nurses also got a 3pc pay rise last year, despite a broader public sector pay freeze.

This will be only the second time the RCN has gone on strike – and a host of other major health unions, including Unison, the Royal College of Midwives and GMB are also balloting members.

With inflation still in double digits, the “winter of discontent” some of us predicted at the start of the year is upon us. On Thursday, postal workers and university staff across Britain walked out, with warnings of more industrial action to come. Tens of thousands of rail workers will refuse to work again for four days in both December and January, upending the travel plans of millions during the first Christmas free of Covid restrictions since 2019.

The UK’s cost of living crisis is now every bit as serious as during the late 1970s. The consumer prices index was 11.1pc higher in October than the same month last year – with headline inflation at a 41-year high. This was driven by record price rises for necessities – fuel, utilities, clothes and food – hitting the poor hardest.

The producer prices index – capturing the cost of inputs businesses need for the goods and services they sell us – was 19.2pc higher than a year ago, pointing to even larger supply chain price pressures. That suggests the inflation already hard-pressed households face in the shops and online will become worse before it gets better.

Amid the barrage of tax rises announced in the Autumn Statement, it was easy to overlook perhaps the most important statistic of all. UK households are expected to endure a 7.1pc drop in living standards over the next two years, according to the OBR.

Falling real-terms pay, rising prices and climbing mortgage costs are battering household incomes, now on course to fall at their fastest pace in six decades. So that’s a cost of living squeeze even worse than the one that sparked the widespread industrial strife of that long winter of late 1978 and early 1979, the most economically dysfunctional and politically fractious period in Britain’s post-war history.

Back then, over half the workforce was unionised, compared with less than a quarter now. But while overall trade union membership is down, over half of public sector workers remain unionised. And during lockdown, medical and teaching unions became increasingly militant. Across some of our most vital services, union leaders are taking hard-line stances.

Some Scottish schools shut last week, the first national schools strike since the 1980s. The British Medical Association has asked for a 26pc pay rise for doctors, with strike action dependent on an upcoming members’ ballot. The Unite union, representing 100,000

NHS workers, is holding a similar vote this week. Next month, tens of thousands of civil servants are expected to walk out, hitting the Home Office, Job Centres, passport and DVLA applications and the Border Force.

Firefighters are voting on industrial action, with hundreds of security guards and London bus drivers also about to go on strike. And at least six more days of Royal Mail stoppages are scheduled for the pre-Christmas rush.

I’d say public sector unions, in particular, shouldn’t assume the broader population will sympathise with their demands for inflationbusting double-digit pay rises. That’s because most of the four fifths of the workforce in private sector employment are enduring real-terms wage reductions, in many cases because their employers are struggling. Meanwhile, the tax burden – which ultimately funds chunky public sector pay rises – is heading for a 70-year high.

Average public sector wages were £579 per week in 2021, compared with £536 in the private sector. So state workers are already paid 8pc more – a fact you don’t hear very often.

In addition, they often enjoy hugely generous final salary pension benefits and earlier retirement – paid for by taxpayers. Yes, public sector pay was frozen from 2011 to 2013, with annual rises then capped at a 1pc until 2018. So the difference between public and private-sector pay has narrowed from 15pc in 2011. But public sector wages still remain significantly higher.

On top of that, public sector staff weren’t furloughed during lockdown, but stayed on full wages. Millions of private sector workers, in contrast, saw their pay drop by a fifth in furlough, while millions more – not least the self-employed who keep our economy moving – lost almost all their wages but received little or no state support.

Yes, hard-working front-line state workers deserve a decent pay rise. But NHS managers, GPs doing far too few face-to-face consultations and others in cushy civil service jobs? I think not.

And does the RCN really think a 19pc pay rise is reasonable or realistic? With a record 7m people on NHS waiting lists in England, this walkout will further increase the chronic backlog.

If they push their luck too far, union bosses will discover that the massed ranks of non-state workers who create the wealth that pays for everything will very quickly lose their patience.

‘Most of the four fifths of the workforce in the private sector are enduring real-terms wage cuts’