Local government has borne the brunt of the coalition’s ‘austerity’ measures.
Local government has borne the brunt of the coalition’s ‘austerity’ measures
When hundreds of thousands of local government and school support workers down tools and strike today, they will do so with one clear aim in mind – to improve on a pay ‘offer’ from the Local Government Association (LGA), which represents their fifth consecutive annual pay cut since 2010.
The J10 strike called by the local government unions – UNISON, GMB and Unite – will be joined by the NUT, PCS and FBU; all with different disputes, but all with a common characteristic and cause – the coalition’s ‘austerity’ agenda and its attack on public spending, public service workers and their pay, conditions of work and pensions.
Nonetheless, it is UNISON’s dispute over the 1 per cent pay offer to over 90 per cent of our members for 2014-2015, and its lifelong impact on their pensions, that has motivated the lowest paid group of public servants (77 per cent of them women, 60 per cent part-time workers) to lose much-needed cash and take to the picket lines.
Local government really has borne the brunt of the coalition’s ‘austerity’ measures. On average, councils will have lost 40 per cent of their funding by 2015, with some poor Labour councils losing even more.
Nonetheless, by the end of 2013 councils had increased their cash reserves by over 20 per cent in real terms from 2010-11 and by £2.6 billion alone between 2012 and 2013. So, whilst our members have struggled to do more with less, with 500,000 lost jobs, pay cuts and all-out war on their conditions of work, councils have been putting millions in the bank.
What has motivated our members to take strike action this year when they were reluctant last year and the one before that? Quite simply that ‘nothing to lose’ feeling.
* Basic pay fallen by 14 per cent since 1997
* Eight of the last 16 annual pay ‘awards’ below inflation
* Pay declined by 18 per cent since the coalition took office
* half a million employees paid below the Living Wage
* The lowest bottom pay rate in the public sector by some distance at £6.45 pence an hour
* NJC car allowances frozen and most users put on lower HMRC rates – leaving many to subsidise their employers for using their own cars for work
* Cuts by most councils to unsocial hours payments, annual leave, sick pay, parental rights, increments and sometimes basic pay too
* Part-time workers – 61 per cent of all employees – suffering drastic cuts to hours, while 20 per cent cover for redundant full-time posts
* 60 per cent of all NJC employees working routine unpaid overtime, just to get the job done
* Reduced pensions because of reduced earnings and pension contributions
The stats are bad. They tell the reason why the lid has finally blown off our members’ patience and they are about to strike. The unions’ claim is for £1.20 an hour for all, to bring the bottom rate of pay to £7.45 pence an hour, closer to the Living Wage of £7.65, and to restore some of the earnings lost by everyone else above that.
Research for UNISON by the New Policy Institute shows that the Treasury would re-coup 55 per cent of the cost of that claim through extra tax and NI take and cuts in benefit expenditure, money which could be re-cycled to councils.
As unions we have requested further negotiations with the current leader and leader-elect of the LGA, which has its annual conference in Bournemouth this week. We stand ready to engage in arbitration as provided for in the collective agreement covering the local government workforce (The NJC agreement).
The LGA has publicly refused to co-operate. We have written to every councillor and MP to seek support. If there is no response, strike action will be escalated in September.
Let’s hope that good sense and just a little recognition of our members’ contribution prevail.
Heather Wakefield is national secretary for local government at UNISON
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42 Responses to “Striking council workers and other public sector employees have a point – enough is enough”
Kryten2k35
My Facebook feed is full of people moaning about “teachers taking a day off” and saying “they have all these days off, but they tell me I can’t take my kids on holiday?”
I try to calmly remind these people that an empowered workforce is important, and that striking is a fundamental right.
rat man
If they can find the money, they can have what they want.
Increasing tax on high earners will only reduce the deficit by less than %1, there is very little to be raised further through corporation tax (all the big “avoidance” schemes are perfectly legal under EU law).
The deficit is 7%, most left economists are happy with 3-4% being run indefinatly.
If they want the public to support them, they need to either set out why increasing the deficit is OK, or find the money, good luck with the latter.
Really what needs to happen is big wage cuts on the high earners in the public sector, a culling of some jobs, and then using the money saved to pay low paid public sector workers more.
swatnan
Just realised that our bins won’t be collected this morning.
Could this be the start of the Summer of Discontent for the Heir to Blair?
Kryten2k35
Or, instead of wasting money on high speed railway lines that a fraction of the population can use, uninvited and wasteful changes to the benefits system, we could carry on paying public sector workers as they are for at least a few more years.
And, public sector and low-paid workers in the public sector are some of the people who form the backbone of this country. taking money away from them is taking money directly from the economy.
Maybe the 11% pay increases MP’s get each year (there abouts) should be frozen, nay, cut, and we could bankrole a few more minimum wage support employees in the public sector? most MP’s are millionaires, and supposedly in it to help the country, so they shouldn’t mind a pay cut.
Selohesra
Another futile strike – do they really think it will achieve anything other than loss of a days pay. Reminiscent of brave soldiers going over the top in WWI – lions lead by donkeys