After one of many worst weeks of commercial unrest in current British historical past — with nurses, railway employees and postal workers amongst these on icy picket traces — Rishi Sunak’s authorities was hanging powerful, warning that large pay rises have been “unaffordable” and would gasoline inflation.
However as Jack Straw, an adviser to Labour governments through the strife-ridden Seventies and later a cupboard minister, mentioned: “These disputes might be settled. They at all times are.” The query being requested as Britain contends with a brand new “winter of discontent” is: who will blink first?
The prime minister instructed his cupboard on Tuesday that the federal government had “been truthful and affordable” in its dealing with of the pay disputes. “There’s a sense that we’ve got to powerful this out,” mentioned one minister.
However there’s additionally a recognition in Sunak’s cupboard that coping with the pay calls for of Britain’s nurses — one of the vital revered professions within the nation — poses an particularly knotty downside.
Tory unity is already beginning to fray on the edges, with Sir Jake Berry, a former social gathering chair, and Dan Poulter, a Conservative MP and NHS hospital physician, saying that Sunak should improve the supply to nurses.
Straw mentioned: “You’ll by no means win an argument with the nursing occupation. It’s not possible.” The issue going through ministers is that bowing to calls for to spice up the pay of greater than 1mn NHS employees in England would price billions of kilos.
In understanding Sunak’s strategy to the wave of strikes gripping Britain, his allies mentioned it was necessary to grasp that ministers are treating every dispute as distinct. However the overarching intention is to carry down pay amid excessive finances deficits and inflation at greater than 10 per cent.
Strikes within the NHS pose a specific concern for the federal government however Sunak is extra bullish about different labour disputes, notably on the railways, the place ministers intervened this month to cease employers providing a ten per cent pay deal over two years.
“The rail unions are beginning to transfer,” mentioned one senior Conservative, noting that solely 63 per cent of RMT rail union members voted to reject a pay supply of 9 per cent over two years from Community Rail, the infrastructure operator. One other union, the TSSA, has accepted Community Rail’s supply.
The sight of RMT chief Mick Lynch this week berating a BBC journalist for “parroting probably the most rightwing stuff” when she requested about declining union assist for the strikes delighted Sunak’s allies. “Lynch is rattled,” mentioned one.
Ministers consider that public assist for strikes “tends to fall the longer they go on” and that the federal government can win the argument at a time when many employees have accepted decrease pay provides — actually lower than the 19 per cent demanded by the Royal Faculty of Nursing, the union behind the nurses’ industrial motion.
For instance, senior Conservatives consider that academics, who’re being balloted by unions for strikes in 2023, are unlikely to have large public assist, on condition that youngsters had their training disrupted by the Covid pandemic.
Sunak has promised new anti-strike laws within the new yr, limiting the harm induced in key public companies by industrial motion, and might be cheered on by many Conservative MPs and rightwing newspapers.
The prime minister additionally believes that Sir Keir Starmer, Labour chief, could be offered as a union lackey — and somebody who would make unaffordable pay provides to them, have been he to win the following election.
“What’s weak is that he’s not robust sufficient to face as much as the unions,” Sunak mentioned on Wednesday. “We are literally defending the general public. They’re defending their paymasters.” Starmer referred to as the nurses’ strike a “badge of disgrace” for the federal government.
The strike motion by nurses and ambulance drivers presents a major problem for a authorities which accepted an unbiased pay assessment physique’s proposal for a £1,400 pay improve for greater than 1mn NHS workers in England, backdated to April. This represents a rise of slightly below 4 per cent within the common primary pay of nurses.
Up to now the cupboard and most Tory MPs have held agency, arguing that the federal government can not afford a better pay rise, that it could be inflationary, and that if the NHS workers obtained extra, it could open the door to comparable calls for from different public sector employees.
However Steve Brine, Tory chair of the Home of Commons well being committee, referred to as for flexibility, saying an “elegant” means out can be to ask the pay assessment physique to rethink its advice. This concept has thus far been rejected by Quantity 10.
There may be nervousness in authorities, as figures together with Sir John Gieve, former Financial institution of England deputy governor, query whether or not bigger pay rises for public sector employees would considerably gasoline inflation.
Lord Nick Macpherson, former everlasting secretary on the Treasury, mentioned: “I feel the federal government has obtained to watch out about its rhetoric right here. Public sector employees don’t create inflation.”
Talking on BBC radio’s The Week in Westminster, he added: “It’s really the personal sector which leads the labour market. We’ve additionally obtained to recognise that public sector pay has been squeezed for a really very long time.”
Some authorities officers concern that different Tory MPs will be a part of Berry and Poulter and urge the federal government to supply more cash to NHS workers, particularly if their constituents begin to complain about cancelled operations. “You already know what Tory MPs are like,” mentioned one.
Steve Barclay, well being secretary, has thus far refused to debate this yr’s NHS pay award with the RCN, saying its demand for a 19 per cent improve is “unaffordable”.
However he, just like the unions, is in search of a strategy to finish the strikes. Barclay’s allies mentioned he had tried to “begin a dialog” concerning the subsequent NHS pay deal that may take impact in April.
However, within the meantime, Sunak should calculate the extent of the doubtless political harm if the strikes run deep into 2023. James Callaghan’s Labour authorities by no means recovered from the “winter of discontent” of 1978-79 and the notion that it had misplaced management.
