After months of refusing to talk about the current year’s pay for health workers, the Tory government has been brought kicking and screaming to the negotiating table by the fantastic strike action across the NHS. This week, junior doctors in the BMA and HCSA unions were the latest to join the action with a 72-hour stoppage. This strike comes after nurses, ambulance workers, physiotherapists, midwives and other NHS staff have either taken to the picket lines or at least voted to do so.
But the offer on the table, which health workers, not including junior doctors at this stage, will now vote on, is not what is desperately needed as NHS staff, like all workers, are squeezed by the spiralling cost of living crisis, on top of seeing their wages decline in real terms by 20% since 2010.
Initially, the Tory government imposed the recommendation of the so-called independent NHS Pay Review Body (PRB) of a meagre consolidated £1,400 for 2022-23, which for a number of health workers meant a 4% pay rise – 10% less than where the more realistic RPI inflation rate has been for most of the year.
The latest pay offer of an additional one-off lump sum, roughly equates to 5-6%, still well below inflation. But, as it won’t be consolidated on to the pay rate, the 5% rise for 2023-24 will be calculated using the PRB award instead. Further, the government claims that 5% is sufficient for 2023-24 because they claim that inflation is expected to fall. But RPI inflation is still at 13.4% and even CPI is 10.1% and the new pay year begins in 2 weeks! And, given the current economic jitters, how certain can any Government forecasts be?!
NHS workers should vote to reject the offer, which is being recommended by all the health union negotiators, apart from Unite. However, this doesn’t mean that there is enthusiastic acceptance. The Unison Health Service Group Executive, meeting hours after the proposed deal was announced, only voted 20-15 to recommend the offer, with Socialist Party members among those who voted against. Emergency workplace or union meetings should be held wherever possible to discuss the reality of the offer. We demand that all 2022-23 pay is inflation-proofed and consolidated and that for 2023-24, the award should be 5% or RPI inflation, whichever is the greater, to ensure that wages are inflation-proofed.
The fantastic three-day strike by junior doctors, along with the responses of many NHS workers to the pay offer shows that the mood exists to fight for what is needed. On Monday evening, an estimated 8,000 junior doctors protested at short notice outside Downing Street, as the occupant Rishi Sunak was in California announcing increasing defence spending by £5bn. Many of these striking doctors took part in the massive Budget Day strike demonstration of over 70,000 strong.
A number of the unions involved in the 15th March mass strike of over 600,000 workers, the biggest since the public sector pensions strike of November 2011, have also forced the Tories to talk pay. There is a definite move on the part of the government to try and get a whole number of the disputes, especially in education, over the line, using the mantra of ‘intensive talks’. But as with the NHS, the Tories are putting pay offers forward far below the real escalating rises in prices, and there is a clear risk of following the precedent of the NHS offer of non-consolidated lump sums. Very significantly, the Tories are not confirming that the pay rises will be backed by increased funding, posing further huge cuts to come.
The Labour-controlled Welsh government has also set a yardstick in such below inflation pay offers. This is a warning of the role that Starmer’s Labour will play in office, and shows why it is essential that the unions are not only prepared to take action against a New Labour government, cutting workers’ pay, but that they build a political alternative for their members and the wider working-class.
Last autumn, this crisis-ridden Tory government, with three prime ministers in a few months, were intent on refusing to negotiate with the public sector unions on pay. This attempt to tough out the rising tide of strikes has been accompanied by the Tories moving new attacks on the right to strike. The UK already has the most restrictive anti-union laws in Western Europe. This has to be taken seriously by the unions, with preparations for mass co-ordinated strike action on the scale of a 24 hour general strike. The tumultuous events in France after Macron’s undemocratic presidential decree to force through pension attacks are a warning that workers will not tolerate moves here against their right to strike.
But as with the government’s ‘strong’ stand on pay, these anti-union measures are a sign of their weakness rather than their strength. Sunak has been concerned not to give anything to one section of workers in order to open the door to all others. However, the scale of workers’ action has forced the Tories to table these pay offers.
But they aren’t sufficient and should be voted down but they are a sign of how workers have pushed the Tories back. Whole layers, many of them taking action for the first time, will draw the conclusion that action gets results and they should fight on. A sign of this determination is shown by the decision of the UCU national Branch Delegate Meeting to reject suspending the upcoming action during negotiations. The co-ordinated strikes could and should be on an even higher level. The TUC and the unions should call a mass Saturday demonstration, before the May local elections, on the fight for a real pay rise and against the anti-union laws. It could be massive and would inject further impetus into the struggle.
This is what the most militant union reps and activists must fight for, and shows why the upcoming national executive elections in a number of unions are so important. Socialist Party members will be standing in order for the unions to have the fighting industrial and political strategy that’s needed.
The 2011 pensions strike was called by 29 public sector unions after meeting together to plan joint action. This has not happened in the same way this time, not even after 1st February. If this had taken place, the Budget Day strike could have been twice the size and more. But given the anger of workers in all sectors, that potential still exists, to build mass workers’ action to defeat the Tories. That fight is still on.
NHS Workers Say No Zoom open meeting: NHS PAY OFFER #VoteReject: for health workers to discuss next steps and share ideas – 7pm Wednesday 22nd March Facebook event
Zoom link Meeting ID: 837 7022 8254 Passcode: 521327
