Tagged with Public Sector Pay

Austerity: trade unions agree coordinated strike action on 14 Oct against pay freeze

public sector payThree of Britain’s biggest unions  have agreed to escalate their dispute over pay with a coordinated strike in October, days before a massive demonstration against cuts. The three unions –  GMB, UNISON and Unite, have agreed that their members will run a coordinated strike of their local government and school members in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on Tuesday 14 October.

Local government workers have suffered three years of a pay freeze, followed by a below inflation pay deal and have now been offered just 1%. They have seen their pay reduced in value by 20% since 2010. Workers took part in a one day stoppage on 10 July. No further talks have taken place since that date, despite the unions offering to go to the Government’s arbitration and conciliation service. Continue reading →

Respect to Owen Smith and Labour backing for public sector workers’ strike

low payBack in January 2012, just after the Tory-led government announced that public sector pay would be frozen and then rise by only 1% in the two years to 2015, which amounted to a significant pay cut in real terms, Labour’s Ed Balls (without prior consultation, we were informed at the time, with Ed Miliband) announced that Labour would support it:

I understand the anger in the public and private sectors at that income squeeze but the reality is given the economy failing as it is, that that pay restraint is going to have to continue.

And if people expect Labour to say ‘we’ll just oppose‘, we can’t do that. [It] would be irresponsible because the priority has got to be getting people into jobs rather than people being paid more.”

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Hunt’s attack on NHS pay is provocative, unfair and insulting

nurseHunt’s excuse for trying to block the 1% pay increase (when inflation is running at 3%) for 1.3 million NHS workers, due in April next year, doesn’t add up. He says it would cost £0.5bn and the incremental payments which have always been paid annually, which Hunt is also trying to end, would cost £0.7bn, and he argues that this is unaffordable. What is remarkable is that Hunt is taking a deliberately provocative stance which goes well beyond that of his gauleiter, Osborne, who has previously declared that the increase is affordable. Continue reading →

Britain needs a pay rise to kickstart growth

On the day when Ed Miliband put the prime minister under severe pressure about declining living standards, newly published figures show that, since the onset of recession in 2008, the real value of wages has fallen by 7%, or more than £50 billion a year. In the same period there’s been a real drop in consumer demand of 5%. So says a report, Britain needs a pay rise, published by civil service union PCS, which argues this fall in the value of pay could be a major obstacle to the return of economic growth. Continue reading →

Regional pay on top of pay cuts and job cuts from a government meaner than Thatcher’s

To introduce regional pay in the public sector (i.e. lower pay in the poorer regions) after already subjecting employees to a 2-year pay freeze, pension cuts and a quarter of a million job deliberate job cuts – in the same budget as removing the 50% tax rate on the 1% ultra-rich – is making this government (totally Tory in all but name) into a byword of greed and selfishness for the extreme rich on a scale that even Thatcher never attempted. Continue reading →