Public Sector Pay: Proposed Strike Action

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I, too, congratulate my good and hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) on securing this important and timely debate.

It is only right and proper that I refer to my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am a proud trade unionist. I am a member of Unite and chair of the Unite parliamentary group, I am co-chair of the National Union of Journalists parliamentary group and I am a member of several other trade union groups, including the justice unions, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, the Public and Commercial Services Union and the Bakers Food & Allied Workers Union.

I have discovered that the UK has the most restrictive trade union laws in the developed world. Indeed, the Conservative Government’s pernicious Trade Union Act 2016 introduced very onerous, rigorous ballot thresholds. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) pointed out, few if any right hon. or hon. Members here today would have been elected if those same conditions had been applied to our parliamentary elections. However, trade unions are meeting those thresholds, with unions reporting record turnouts and record “yes” votes.

In the limited time I have, I want to illustrate the situation facing trade union members in just a few of the public sector unions. After 12 years of Conservative cuts, pay freezes, and attacks on pensions and terms and conditions, workers have been left with no choice. The civil service has rarely faced such a huge number of challenges in such a short period. Indeed, the PCS has launched a national ballot for industrial action, which I think closed yesterday, because its members face an unprecedented cost of living crisis. The Government plan to cut 91,000 civil service jobs; in response the PCS is calling for an end to those cuts, a 10% pay rise, a living wage of at least £15 an hour and an immediate 2% cut in contributions that PCS members have overpaid to pensions since 2018. That seems completely reasonable.

If we look at the railways, far from rewarding rail workers for their Trojan efforts during the pandemic, the Government have exploited the economic disruption that it caused and the restructuring that has been brought about on the privatised railways. Workers employed by Network Rail have been told that there will be an open-ended pay freeze from 2021. RMT members in most train operating companies received no pay rise in 2020, and from January 2021 the Government informed them that there was no budget to increase wages. Cleaners are in an even worse position, along with outsourced staff, who have been pushed to the brink of poverty. The RMT has calculated that rail cleaners on the national minimum wage have seen their annual earnings fall by £844 in real terms in the last year, even allowing for the April uplift.

Prison officers, who do an incredibly difficult job, often in hostile environments, are not allowed to take industrial action. It is important to welcome the fact that, after two years, the Government have finally accepted —the Minister is nodding because she was the Minister who did this—the recommendation of a £3,000 pay rise to staff on a fair and sustainable contract. However, that is not enough to make up for 21 years of cuts, as evidenced by the proliferation of food banks in prisons and the number of prison officers leaving the service.

A similar situation is reported by the National Association of Probation Officers. The Fire Brigades Union is in a similar predicament—staff were initially offered 2%, which has been upped to 5%, but with the caveat that the Government will not fund the additional 3%. The industrial action that we have seen across the public sector is a consequence of failed Government policy.

I must stress the vital importance of protecting the fundamental right to withdraw labour. The Government are threatening to introduce legislation to further undermine basic employment law. The right to strike must be protected at all costs.