Struggling workers WILL continue striking for fair pay in 2023 and WON’T “settle for crumbs”, a campaigning union leader warned last night.
Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said: “We will not be broken or beaten by Rishi Sunak and his government. We are here to stay.”
She was referring to planned anti-strike legislation and speculation that unions were set to run out of money.
Defiant Ms Graham added: “ Unite has a strike fund worth tens of millions of pounds, it is topped up every month.
“All the talk of new and more powerful attacks on the unions that the Prime Minister and others have promised shows they are guilty of a grand miscalculation.
“Just who pays for the latest economic crisis will be the question of 2023.
“I will do all in my power to ensure it won’t be workers and their families.”
The Government has repeatedly refused to join negotiations, as different groups call for fairer pay and conditions.
On Christmas Eve, Mr Sunak said the Government had acted “fairly and reasonably”.
He accused unions of “holding our public services to ransom” and added: “Our door is always open.
“There’s lots of things people have raised as things that we might make a difference to, and we’d be happy to talk about all those things.”
Paul Nowak, general secretary of the TUC, accused the Tories of living in “cloud cuckoo land” for “acting like strikes are going to go away”.
He said workers seeking better pay and conditions were “in this for the long haul”, adding: “The Government need to come back down to earth and sit down at the negotiating table.
“We’ve had big wins, we’ve won pay rises for baggage handlers and cleaners. It’s teachers and paramedics next.”
Ms Graham said confidence was spreading and workers are not prepared to take real-terms pay cuts amid “rampant profiteering” by bankers, energy companies and the food industry.
She said: “More people feel confident to take strike action, which is something that has not happened for a long time.
“We are ramping up disputes. They are not coming to an end. In my 25 years of negotiations as a trade union leader the abdication of leadership from this Government in the NHS dispute is the worst I have ever seen.
“It looks like the purpose of Rishi Sunak’s government is to make sure all their corporate associates and friends in the City can be looked after before the inevitable. They can let it rip while the workers will pay yet again with another era of Austerity Mark 2.
“Well the game’s up. This time they’ve been rumbled.
“The workers are learning day by day that they no longer have to accept crumbs from the rich man’s table. The genie is out the bottle and Sunak and Co can’t put it back in.”
Ms Graham spoke as hundreds of thousands of workers are poised to join strike action this year in the fight for fairness.
Around 480,000 workers from 14 sectors – including teachers, nurses, rail staff, posties and bus drivers – will be walking out for a number of days over January.
Royal College of Nursing union members will leave their posts on January 18 and 19.
The RCN says it wants to “rectify the years of real-terms pay cuts that are pushing people out of the nursing profession and putting patient safety at risk... we expect a pay award that goes 5% above inflation.”
The British Medical Association will ballot 50,000 junior doctors on January 9 as it seeks to get a 6% pay increase.
Patricia Marquis, the RCN’s Director for England, accused the government of lying about being open to talks on pay.
She said: “This isn’t just going to go away. It’s taken us 106 years to get to the point but nurses are really at the end of their tether now.
“They’re prepared to miss out on pay and stand out in the wind and rain to get this situation resolved.
“The Government keeps saying the door is open but it is well and truly closed and bolted.
“They are not willing to have a conversation about pay, so essentially they’re lying. They need to be honest and come to the table.”
Teachers in England and Wales are inching closer to the first national dispute over pay since the financial crisis back in 2008. They have rejected a 5% rise and on January 13 will ballot members over “last resort” strike action. Kevin Courtney, general secretary of the National Education Union, said teachers feel “ignored” and “very angry”.
He added: “We can’t be certain of the results but we think they’ll be positive.
“This is the last resort. It’s not something driven to lightly but we’ve had to strike because the Government isn’t engaging, it’s run down our schools.
“Our workers are angry and want to do something about it.
“Strike action isn’t something anyone looks forward to, no one wants disruption but people have been ignored for too long.”
Labour Party chair Anneliese Dodds, who is also the Shadow Secretary for Women and Equalities, said: “One New Year’s resolution for Rishi Sunak should be to swallow his pride, stop playing politics and properly negotiate with workers to finally put an end to this chaos.”
Unite chief Ms Graham said a £40billion black hole in the public purse – grounds on which public sector workers are denied a fair rise – could be plugged if the Government targeted energy companies.
The energy crisis – which has seen global prices soar since Russia ’s war on Ukraine – will generate an estimated £170billion extra for UK suppliers of gas and electricity.
Ms Graham said: “Rishi Sunak must say to the energy companies ‘give us £50billion of that £170billion excess profit’ – and we could get rid of the black hole in one fell swoop.
“It would cost £6.2billion to give the whole of the NHS a 10% pay rise and he would still have over £3billion left over.
“The Conservatives are not going to make that choice, but Labour must.
“We need them to say that rampant profiteering is not acceptable and everyday people must not pay for a crisis not of their own making.”
Ms Graham – elected as Unite’s first female leader in August 2021 – added: “If the Government continues to make the choices they are making, then of course workers are going to have a very tough time. But I am going to shout from the rooftops and do everything I can in 2023 to make sure that people know that different choices can be made by this Government to spare us the pain that we are going through.”
Chris Hopkins, from polling group Savanta, said public support was behind the growing number of workers forced into strike action – and Mr Sunak should be concerned about his strategy.
He said: “It’s clear that the public are on the side of workers.
“While that doesn’t necessarily mean that the public think trade unions are blameless, they do believe the Government is equally, if not more, to blame for so many public sector walkouts.”
