Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt could end months of damaging National Health Service strikes by using an unexpected boost in Britain’s finances to offer a substantial pay rise to public sector workers, a key union figure said.
(Bloomberg) — Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt could end months of damaging National Health Service strikes by using an unexpected boost in Britain’s finances to offer a substantial pay rise to public sector workers, a key union figure said.
Economists said Monday that Britain’s outlook has improved enough to hand Hunt an extra £10 billion ($12 billion) at next month’s budget with. Unite, which represents around 100,000 National Health Service workers including ambulance workers, cleaners and porters, is pushing the chancellor to use that to resolve the long-running dispute.
“There’s a moral case to give workers a decent pay rise, but we can now see even clearer that the financial case exists as well,” Unite’s lead officer, Onay Kasab, said in an interview. “When people see this, I think they’ll give our members even more support because it reinforces the fact that the money is there.”
The government is grappling to contain life-disrupting walkouts that have become almost a daily occurrence in Britain in recent months, affecting not only the NHS but schools, railways and airports. But Hunt is also battling to reduce inflation that touched a four-decade high of 11.1% in October and remains in double digits. He’s repeatedly argued he can’t dole out generous pay rises for fear of stoking prices further.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies on Tuesday pushed back against the government’s claim that public sector pay rises would fuel inflation, noting that the absence of market prices in public services such as the NHS make it “difficult to see how a higher public sector pay award could directly trigger a wage–price spiral.”
Trade unions, for their part, say it’s precisely because of the squeeze on living costs that their workers need more pay. The extra money is an “easy fix for Jeremy Hunt,” Kasab said. “That windfall could be used to help resolve the pay dispute within the NHS.”
NHS Strikes
Walkouts in the NHS have been snowballing, with junior doctors saying last week they’ll strike for three consecutive days next month. They’ll join nurses and ambulance workers in taking industrial action.
The IFS said that unless departments are given extra cash from the Treasury, it is “difficult” to see an end to the pay disputes.
Health unions not only want the government to agree pay rises going forward but also rethink a pay award for the 2022-23 financial year granted last summer. Yet negotiations are patchy: the government is holding talks with the Royal College of Nursing but other unions have been left out of the process.
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“We can’t really afford not to give workers a decent pay rise because not paying people properly has led to over 130,000 vacancies in England alone across the NHS,” Kasab said. “That has an impact on service levels and that has an impact on what is called excess deaths.”
Unite is calling for a “decent pay rise,” without putting an exact figure on it, and wants the government to make an offer. Kasab hit out at the government’s “divide and rule” strategy of union negotiations.
“This isn’t just about nurses — a hospital doesn’t function without the cleaners, without the porters, paramedics, call center workers,” he said. Failing to invite Unite in for talks was just “making strikes in the spring all the more likely, it doesn’t bode well.”
But there’s little sign of the government acceding to union demands. Hunt dismissed calls for substantial pay hikes last week, saying the “fundamental outlook” for the UK finances hadn’t changed. “Pay rises are recurrent and they have a recurrent cost on the Exchequer,” he told reporters.
That raises the prospect of potential one-time payments to public sector workers to help with inflation — but Kasab warned this would not help with “recruitment and retention” of staff. “Having said that, get us in the room, if they’ve got an offer let’s have it,” he said.
–With assistance from Eamon Akil Farhat.
(Adds comments from Institute for Fiscal Studies in paragraphs 5 and 8.)
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