Strikes, low wages and a summer of discontent

Britain is braced for the biggest rail strikes in 30 years, starting tomorrow, as a slew of professions hammered by slow wage growth threaten to follow suit.

Doctors and teachers have joined binmen, civil servants, postal workers, prison officers and traffic wardens in threatening strike action in the coming weeks.

Teaching unions are calling for a 12 per cent pay rise and are set to strike in the next school term unless they receive a significantly improved offer by Wednesday. Criminal barristers voted today for strike action starting next week which will grind courts to a halt, adding to the huge Covid case backlog.  

The public is already facing a week of chaos on the railways with the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) embroiled in a row about pay, jobs and conditions. Last-ditch efforts to reach a deal today failed, meaning the 24-hour strikes planned on most major lines on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday will go ahead. Some 10,000 Transport for London workers will also walk out for 24 hours on Tuesday.

The government has opted not to get involved in negotiations between rail firms and unions, saying it would make things too complicated. But if strikes spill over into the public sector, it will be under pressure to do so.

The question is whether ministers will be able to hold the line. No 10’s argument is that pay increases in line with price rises would only make the problem worse – a wage-price spiral would force the Bank of England to put up interest rates further and faster, strangling growth in the process.

Downing Street today urged private companies to exercise pay restraint and “avoid doing anything that would stoke inflationary pressures further”. Simon Clarke, chief secretary to the Treasury, all but ruled out a public sector pay rise in line with inflation, calling for “collective discipline” to avoid an inflationary spiral.  

The difficulty the government faces is that if there was ever a time to make a legitimate demand for more pay, it’s now. Britain is experiencing the biggest fall in living standards since the 1950s, with average pay growth trailing inflation by between 3 and 5 per cent, according to the Bank of England.  

It’s one thing arguing that rail workers have decent salaries compared to equivalent professions. Teachers and nurses are a different story.

And the government may find that resisting calls for pay rises means it’s forced into spending more elsewhere. Ministers have admitted that Rishi Sunak’s £15bn aid package announced last month will only go so far.

As strikes, travel disruption and tanking living standards come to a head, the phrase doing the rounds is “summer of discontent”. Unless the government comes up with a plan to deal with unions’ demands that isn’t simply saying “no”, this is where we’re heading.