SHARON GRAHAM’S keynote address to Unite policy conference fixed on the question key to the fate of the current strike wave: can unions halt and reverse the long-term retreat on pay and conditions, or merely slow it down?
The highest level of industrial action since the 1980s is far from over. News that teachers’ union NASUWT has beaten thresholds to deliver a solid strike mandate for the autumn build on increasing co-ordination among education unions determined to stop an exodus of teachers from the profession, and a crisis in school funding.
Headteachers’ unions NAHT and ASCL are also balloting for strikes — showing anger runs deep at every level in the sector — while the largest education union the NEU is seeking to renew its mandate. The latter’s general secretary-elect Daniel Kebede has warned ministers to get real about pay demands or face a “general strike in education” before the end of the year.
Rail bosses’ decision to declare war on their workforce — as well as most disabled and elderly passengers — with plans to close all ticket offices in England represent a bombshell lobbed into a transport sector already riven with disputes.
Unite itself, as Graham points out, is fighting and winning more disputes than ever, having put over £400 million into the pockets of over 200,000 workers over the course of more than 800 disputes in the last 20 months.
At the same time, the movement has seen less positive settlements and some setbacks. In a key sector like healthcare, despite enormous public support and anxiety over an NHS on its knees, members in some unions have accepted improved offers from government that still fall well below inflation, while in the biggest healthcare union to reject, the Royal College of Nursing, members voted to renew their strike mandate — but not by enough to beat Tory-imposed ballot thresholds.
At national level, fewer sectors are in dispute than were a few months ago. There is no point in lamenting this. Strikes take a huge commitment on behalf of members losing pay and are hard to sustain in a cost-of-living crisis in which key players like the Bank of England keep pummelling households with interest rate rises that drive the cost of housing up and up.
But it remains the case that below-inflation settlements mean the longest real-terms pay squeeze since the Napoleonic wars is continuing. That the trend of falling wages goes on, and the share of the national wealth paid to workers keeps shrinking.
Despite all the disputes of the last year, average pay rises in both the public and private sectors significantly lag inflation, and yet even this is seen as too much by the ruling class and its media mouthpieces, who howled earlier in the week that the pay rises achieved went against calls by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey for “wage restraint.”
This relentless propaganda underlines the importance of exposing the class character of this received wisdom from economic and political decision-makers. And stripping an institution like the Bank of England of its mystique is a step to challenging its notional “independence” as a means of removing democratic oversight of policies that inflict real pain on ordinary people.
Turning the tables on the ruling class will only be possible when workers have confidence that things can go in a different direction — which is why a seeming aside like Graham’s reference to demanding new final salary pension schemes is very welcome.
Britain is a £2.5 trillion economy where big corporations are making record-breaking profits. The idea that we cannot afford inflation-proofed pay rises, higher pensions or better public services is a lie told on behalf of the class appropriating those funds for itself.
