Comment
ROSS CLARK
If Sir Keir wants to get the economy on track he needs to do one thing – stand up to the unions’ ridiculous demands
The last thing the economy needs is even more subsidised inactivity
LESS than two weeks after caving in to rail union demands for an inflation-busting pay rise, Sir Keir Starmer is set to make a speech today outlining a grim forecast for the economy, at least in the short term.
He is right: Things will continue to get economically worse for Britain until the Government finally summons the strength to resist the outrageous demands of the unions, rather than capitulating to them at every turn.
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It has been a long time since anyone had to take a Trades Union Congress seriously.
After the union movement imploded so spectacularly during the Winter of Discontent in 1979, ushering in a Conservative government which was determined to rein-in its excesses, union membership declined sharply.
Union leaders themselves, who had enjoyed beer and sandwiches at No 10 during Jim Callaghan’s time, found themselves with an ever-diminishing role in national life.
Neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown dared to reverse that.
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Nuttier motions
But sadly, when the TUC meets in Brighton next month no one can be confident its nuttier motions will not at some point become government policy.
The Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union, for example, wants to set a national “maximum working temperature”, above which workers would have to be furloughed at employers’ or taxpayers’ expense.
The suggested level — 30C for sedentary occupations and 27C for manual work — is reached multiple times in a typical summer in Britain.
We are already paying for the Covid furlough scheme, which at one point involved the government paying the wages of nine million workers, a disastrous and unsustainable burden which lies at the heart of soaring government debt and the recent spike in inflation.
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The last thing the economy needs is even more subsidised inactivity.
But that isn’t all. The bakers’ union has called for a national “Heat Strike” when the temperature anywhere in Britain exceeds 36C.
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You can at least try to negotiate with a union which puts in an excessive pay demand, but just how do you negotiate with the weather gods?
Then there is a motion from the University College Union demanding that the prisons education service adopts a “decolonised curriculum”.
It would be good if they worked on prisoners’ literacy and numeracy skills, to help them get jobs and so keep out of trouble when they are released.
But no, burglars and muggers must be taught the full evils of the British Empire.
There is also a demand from the Artists Union England that the use of AI in workplaces be banned unless unions have approved it.
It would take us back to the days when the luddites were smashing the weaving looms they accused of taking workers’ jobs.
Normally, you would expect a government to negotiate firmly with unions on pay claims
Ross Clark
But above all is the motion by the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union calling for what it calls “pay restoration” in the public sector — in other words, big, fat, above-inflation pay rises.
According to some calculations their demands could add an extra £50billion a year to public spending, with a knock-on effect on the taxpayers’ liabilities for public sector pensions, which tend to be linked to final salaries or lifetime earnings.
The public sector unions love to compare their members to private sector workers when complaining that their pay has fallen behind, according to some measure.
What they don’t say, of course, is that most public sector workers continue to enjoy job security and pensions of which many private sector workers can only dream.
Many private sector workers have seen their pensions decimated.
Normally, you would expect a government to negotiate firmly with unions on pay claims, never losing sight of the fact it is representing the interest of taxpayers.
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Moreover, you would expect it to ignore altogether the madder motions coming out of the TUC.
But I am not so confident, given that Labour ministers have spent their first few weeks in office ceding to almost every union pay demand — and, crucially, without even demanding anything in return, such as improvements to working practices to boost lamentable productivity in the public sector.
We saw the result of the Government’s feebleness when Aslef announced a new round of strikes on LNER within 48 hours of its members being awarded a 15 per cent pay rise.
Now the unions have been emboldened there will be no let-up in their demands.
Recipe for decline
Starmer has been described as the friendliest Prime Minister to the unions since Callaghan, who was Prime Minister between 1976 and 1979.
But it is far worse than that.
Callaghan spent a lot of his time in office warning unions that pay rises would have to be earned, that workers would have to accept that they might need to be retrained, or even change occupation several times in their working lives, to keep up with advances in technology.
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The current Government, by contrast, seems happy to let the unions run workplaces, to decide which technologies are and are not allowed to be adopted and to set their own pay, regardless of how much work their members are actually doing.
It is a recipe for economic decline, which Labour ministers will surely come round to realising at some point — although unfortunately it might be too late by then.
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