Fully funded NHS & services
A real pay rise
Eve Miller, Unison rep and NHS worker
Teachers, nurses, doctors, support staff and more wait with bated breath.
As Keir Starmer makes his entrance into Downing Street, many of us working in strained public services are overdue a pay rise by over three months because of the Tories’ disregard and delay. Addressing the years of pathetic below-inflation ‘pay deals’ is one of the new government’s first tasks.
Public services are at breaking point after years of vicious cuts to funding. Following recent years of double-digit inflation, sky-high energy prices and soaring food costs, skilled staff have been worn down. Nurses, school staff and other public service workers are forced to rely on food banks to make ends meet.
All the while, workplace demands have skyrocketed due to a recruitment and retention crisis everywhere in the public sector. 40% of teachers work over 26 hours of unpaid overtime per week due to lack of support staff. The Trades Union Congress estimates that public sector workers are earning £200 per month less than we did in 2010, in real terms.
Skint
Naturally, skint public sector workers are looking to Starmer’s new Labour government to increase our salaries – at the very least above inflation level – to make up for the years of cuts to pay in real terms.
Some leaders of the trade unions pleaded with us to vote for Starmer’s Labour at the recent general election, promising that things would be better. But what plan does he have for the workers who break their backs carrying the tired, failing public services that this country so desperately needs?
When asked about public sector pay, whether he would ‘give the unions what they want’, Starmer replied: “No”. Well, we have a message for you, Starmer: ‘It’s time to pay up or we will fight back!’
When public service workers fought together and took strike action against the Tories, we won concessions. We have to be prepared to do the same with a Labour government too. This is the first step to rebuilding our public services, and we will fight tooth and nail for it, even if it means taking to the picket lines to do so.
What can trade unions win from Labour? What we think
