At the Trafalgar Square rally on the 10 July 2014 public sector pay strike, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)
James Kerr
In 2012 Policy Exchange, the Tories favourite think tank, produced a paper – ‘Local pay, local growth’ – which argued that holding down public sector wages and pensions and bringing them into line with ‘equivalent’ jobs in the private sector would save £6.3 billion a year.
It continued by saying the money could be better spent on tackling local unemployment and used to create hundreds of thousands of private or public sector jobs. This argument was a central plank of the coalition government’s austerity agenda ie, public sector workers must tighten their belts for the good of the country as a whole. It was even bought by some in the trade union movement who hoped that by accepting attacks on pay and conditions, jobs could be saved.
It’s an argument which needs to be examined in light of Unison’s recent special conference, and other public sector unions, discussing pay claims ahead of a new government, and the TUC’s ‘Britain needs a pay rise’ campaign.
Trade unionists in the public sector need to be ready to counter the claims that cuts in the public sector mean improvements elsewhere.
However, in the last three years we haven’t seen a surge in the number of nurses or teachers or high quality private sector jobs. Instead, there have been savage cuts, zero-hour contracts and an exodus from the teaching profession where I work.
We need to stand firm in saying that public sector workers demanding decent pay is not just a narrow, selfish demand but also part of stopping the rot, stopping the race to the bottom, and fighting for decent jobs on decent pay for all.
