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ROSS CLARK
Shameless unions’ coordinated strike blitz aims to topple Tories – but Labour would give them exactly what they demand
The unions are not just Labour’s paymasters — they are its puppet masters, too
DOES anyone really believe that the strikes paralysing the railways this weekend, the National Education Union’s threat to strike in September, and the continuing junior doctors’ walkouts are independent of each other?
It is beginning to look like one big, concerted action by the union movement to try to bring down Rishi Sunak’s government — just as the unions helped to destroy Jim Callaghan’s Labour government in the Winter Of Discontent in 1979.
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Mick Whelan, whose Aslef union is behind this weekend’s action, gave the game away on the BBC this week when he suggested that the strikes would be rapidly settled once a Labour government is elected.
The unions’ strategy seems clear: help put Labour into power — then press a Starmer government for their just rewards.
Never mind Rachel Reeves’ promise of fiscal responsibility — the unions will be expecting a huge payday the moment she gets behind her desk at 11 Downing Street.
Don’t bet on Labour not caving in to their demands.
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In spite of its efforts to modernise during the Blair years, the party remains deeply in hock to the unions.
Of the £5.4million that Labour received in donations before the 2019 General Election campaign, £5million came from the unions.
Not only that, 13 of the 39 members of Labour’s National Executive Committee are trade unionists.
No wonder Labour has already promised to reverse the modest trade union legislation passed by the Government since 2010, including demands for minimum service levels on strike days.
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The unions are not just Labour’s paymasters — they are its puppet masters, too.
True, NHS consultants yesterday settled their pay dispute with the government.
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But many of the other public sector unions have made such excessive demands that they must know the Government cannot possibly give in.
Aslef has already rejected a pay deal which would take train drivers’ average pay from £60,000 to £65,000.
That would put them close to the top ten per cent of earners — and give them nearly double what nurses earn.
That is before overtime payments.
Drivers on Avanti North West trains were recently offered £600 a time for extra shifts, which could put some of them on more than £100,000 a year.
It is hardly as if the railway industry is earning the money to afford these fat pay rises.
Last year, the railways received £11.9billion in government subsidy — compared with just £9.2billion in ticket sales and £1.5billion from other sources such as freight.
In a less feather-bedded industry, train drivers would be forced to accept pay cuts and job losses as their employers battled to survive.
Puppet masters
The BMA is still demanding a 35 per cent pay increase for junior doctors — ten times the current rate of inflation.
Its claim that such a rise will merely compensate doctors for a 26 per cent real-terms fall since 2008 is wrong.
The BMA is trying to use the old Retail Prices Index, which has long been abandoned as an official measure of inflation because of faulty methodology.
Nor is there any truth in the union’s claim that junior doctors are paid a lower hourly rate than baristas at Pret.
Its claim was based on figures which included bonuses paid to baristas — but ignored the many extra payments received by junior doctors.
In any case, junior doctors are still in training and on a conveyor belt which is likely to take them, within a few years, to earning more than £100,000 a year as consultants.
Teachers with the NEU are also demanding a pay rise based on the RPI.
It further wants Ofsted to be abolished, claiming that inspections are damaging teachers’ mental health and that they “can be trusted to do their jobs effectively without a punitive, high-stakes system to keep them in line”.
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Can you imagine, say, aircraft maintenance engineers demanding an end to inspections of their work on the grounds that it harms their mental wellbeing?
The NEU isn’t always much good at standing up for its members, mind.
It has been feeble when it comes to defending a teacher at Batley Grammar School in West Yorks, who has been in hiding since 2021 after he showed a picture of the Prophet Muhammad in a religious studies class.
Nor does it seem to care much for children.
It opposed the reopening of schools after the first Covid lockdown and even called on its members to refuse to give online lessons from their homes, depriving pupils of a proper education for months.
Then there are the civil service unions, who have threatened strike action over Government demands to return to their Whitehall desks even for just three days a week.
Rude awakening
Even when they do turn up, some seem more interested in taking a woke course than actually doing their job to enact government policy on things such as the Rwanda scheme.
Anyone who is fooled by Mick Whelan into thinking that the strikes would quickly be resolved under a Labour government is in for a rude awakening.
If elected, Labour will no doubt give the unions much of what they want, at great expense to taxpayers.
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But you can be sure that, once emboldened, the unions will be back with ever more outrageous demands.
As they showed in 1979, they are quite capable of going to war against a Labour government, too.
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