Striking council workers and other public sector employees will be saying 'enough is enough' this Thursday. They have nothing to lose but the undermining of their future pay and pensions
When hundreds of thousands of local government and school support workers down tools and strike on 10 July, they will do so with one clear aim in mind - to improve on a pay 'offer' from the Local Government Association which represents their fifth consecutive annual pay cut since 2010. They will also be making it clear that they will no longer be taken for granted. Enough really is enough this time.
The J10 strike called by the local government unions - UNISON, GMB and Unite - will be joined by the NUT, PCS and FBU; all with different disputes, but all with a common characteristic and cause - the coalition's 'austerity' agenda and its attack on public spending, public service workers and their pay, conditions of work and pensions.
Nonetheless, it is UNISON's dispute over the 1% pay offer to over 90% of our members for 2014-2015 - and its lifelong impact on their pensions - that has motivated the lowest paid group of public servants - 77% of them women, 60% part-time workers - to lose much-needed cash and take to the picket lines.
Public Finance blog readers may feel that they've heard enough from me about NJC pay. I hope you will bear with me just once more to take in a few key facts. The National Joint Council for Local Government Services - once a proud Whitley Council - was established to ensure industrial harmony. Local government - once an exemplary employer - is now reduced to emergency measures to avoid breaching the National Minimum Wage and the proponent of massive cuts to conditions of service in almost every employer across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
No-one would begin to deny that local government has borne the brunt of the coalition's 'austerity' measures. On average, councils will have lost 40% of their funding by 2015 - and some in poor Labour councils denied much more than that. Times are tough for most of them, with the LGA threatening doom by 2020, as social care and other statutory demands rise. Nonetheless, by the end of 2013 councils had increased their cash reserves by over 20% in real terms from 2010-11 and by £2.6 billion alone between 2012 and 2013, when our members faced their third consecutive annual pay freeze. Schools which employ about 20% of the NJC workforce have been relatively protected. Money has been available, but while our members have struggled to cover for the (now) 500,000 jobs lost, pay cuts and all-out war on their conditions of work, it has been put into the bank not their pockets.
What has motivated our members to take strike action this year when they were reluctant last year and the one before that? Quite simply - that 'nothing to lose' feeling and the growing realisation that if they don't act now, they might soon be paying councils for the priviledge of having a job at all! We have done the sums on their pensions too and the results don't make pretty reading. Unless a stop is put to the decline in their pay, they will spend the rest of their lives on even lower pensions than the pittance most were in line to receive anyway. And the state will have to foot a larger bill for their retirement.
Take a library assistant earning £16,890 with six years in the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) and intending to retire in 2024: Compare the pay she has been offered as a result of the employers' 1% 'offer' and the pay she would get if our claim for £1 an hour were met - £17,059 and £19,205. Her pension loss would be £1,030 a year, plus a reduction of £1,128 in her lump sum. Add in the loss of unsocial hours pay for Saturday working ( common occurrence) and she loses a further £880 a year in pension and £873 lump sum, making a total loss of £1,910 in pension and £2001 from her lump sum payment. The decline in pay has already hit pensions hard.
So, dear readers, please ask yourselves how you would feel if you were faced with greater poverty in retirement and the following applied to you:
* Basic pay fallen by 14% since 1997
* Eight of the last 16 annual pay 'awards' below inflation
* Pay declined by 18% since the coalition took office
* Almost 500,000 NJC employees paid below the Living Wage
* 1 million earn less than the hourly equivalent of £21,000 a year - over £6000 below median earnings in the economy
* The lowest bottom pay rate in the public sector by some distance - £6.45 pence an hour
* NJC car allowances frozen and most users put on lower HMRC rates - leaving many to subsidise their employers for using their own cars for work
* Cuts by most councils to unsocial hours payments, annual leave, sick pay, parental rights, increments and sometimes basic pay too
* Part-time workers - 61% of all employees - suffering drastic cuts to hours, while 20% cover for redundant full-time posts
* 60% of all NJC employees working routine unpaid overtime, just to get the job done
* Annual per capita spend on training around £190 - 90% of which is spent on managers
You must agree. The stats are bad. They tell the reason why the lid has finally blown off our members' patience and they are about to strike. The unions' claim is for at least £1 an hour for all, to bring the bottom rate of pay to £7.45 pence an hour, closer to the Living Wage of £7.65 - and to restore some of the earnings lost by everyone else above that. Research for UNISON by the New Policy Institute shows that the Treasury would re-coup 55% of the cost of that claim through extra tax and NI take and cuts in benefit expenditure - money which could be re-cycled to councils.
As unions we have requested further negotiations with the current leader and leader-elect of the LGA, which has its annual conference in Bournemouth from today. We stand ready to engage in arbitration as provided for in the NJC's collective agreement. The LGA has publicly refused to co-operate. We have written to every councillor and MP to seek support. If there is no response, strike action will be escalated in September.
Let's hope that good sense and just a little recognition of our members' contribution prevail.
