By Rebecca Anderson
THE TUC will hold its annual conference this month. One of the motions on the agenda is whether to campaign for public sector pay restoration, after a decade of cuts that have eroded the living standards of millions of workers.
The motion, proposed by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), notes that public sector pay has fallen by an average of 1.5% per year since 2011, i.e. 19.5%. Though it calls only for a campaign, with no mention of strike action, even this is too radical for Unison and GMB, which do not want to put any pressure on Labour.
However, the reality is that the government is preparing a new wave of austerity, under the guise of ‘responsible fiscal management’ and ‘sharing the pain’. Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves plans to cut public spending by £30 billion over the next five years.
The government has also made it clear that it will not reverse Tory privatisation, outsourcing and deregulation that have undermined the public sector and the welfare state. The new austerity will not be directed at the rich, who saw their wealth increase by £250 billion during the pandemic, but at the very people the TUC represents.
That right wing unions do not wish to fight Labour is sadly predictable. But even ‘left’ unions like PCS, RMT and FBU are proposing nothing more than words. The battle at the TUC will be about how cosy the relationship with the government should be, not about how to resist the coming austerity.
Labour’s empty promises
Labour promised to end 14 years of Tory austerity and restore dignity and fairness to public sector workers. But their recent pay offers to junior doctors, train drivers and other public servants show that they are not willing to deliver on their pledges. Instead, they are trying to buy off the workers with meagre and misleading pay awards that do not even repair the damage done by soaring inflation.
The 22% offered to junior doctors sounds great and is recommended by their union leaders, but includes a 9% pay rise they have already received and falls far short of the 35% they have been fighting for.
Aslef has also accepted 14% for train drivers, but this covers 2024-25 and the previous two years, i.e. 14% over three years. The offer falls far short of inflation, which was 11% in 2022-23, 8% in 2023-24 and an expected 2-3% this year.
This trend is repeated even in unions not affiliated to Labour. In the teachers’ union NEU, the ‘left’ executive voted to recommend accepting 5.5%. Not only is this half their 10% claim, it is not fully funded, leaving schools to find their £450 million of cuts to meet the increased wages bill.
Civil servants, represented by the PCS, have been offered 5%. Contrary to their motion, the PCS is not campaigning for pay restoration. General Secretary Fran Heathcote and President Martin Kavannagh have been manoeuvring against the union’s governing body to block strike action for a higher pay award.
Fight Labour
The unions cannot afford to capitulate to the Labour government or to hope that it will change its course. The only way to defend public sector pay and the interests of the working class as a whole is to fight.
When inflation reached its height in 2022, trade unionists had to organise to force their leaders to take action to defend our living standards. We had to organise to stop our strikes being sold short. To resist the coming austerity we will need to organise the rank and file of our unions again.
Where we failed in 2022 and 2023 to force our leaders to call effective strike action or stop the sell-outs, there are lessons to be learned for the coming struggle.
Through rank and file organisation we can launch a political struggle, linked to a strategy of escalating and coordinated strikes, to make the rich pay. Only by transforming our unions and, where necessary, replacing those leaders who will not fight, can we restore our pay and public services.
