Is British prime minister Keir Starmer going to “give the unions what they want”? That was the question put to him about the whole swathe of public-sector pay deals, with recommendations due in the next few weeks – schools, NHS, civil service, local government. “No”, was his immediate, one-word response.
At every opportunity, the Labour leadership is trying to dampen expectations. But the majority of trade union leaders told their members that it was in their best interests to elect a Labour government that, unlike the Tories, Labour would listen.
Starmer added: “What I’ve done at the moment, as you’d expect, is to prioritize the most significant and the most important.” How does he prioritise? No doubt the junior doctors’ stubborn determination, taking strike action during the general election campaign, has pushed their cause to the top of the list.
Junior doctors in Wales recently voted to accept a 12.4% pay increase from the Labour Welsh government. That will be seen as a benchmark for junior doctors in England. A deal for them in turn will be seen as a benchmark across the whole public sector.
Undoubtedly many trade union leaders will want to persuade their members to ‘give Labour time’, or make excuses for the ‘difficult financial circumstances’ facing the government. How easily they will find it to win those arguments, or frustrate the development of action, remains to be seen.
“We expect an above-inflation teacher pay offer that is fully funded”, National Education Union general secretary Daniel Kebede said in response to Starmer’s comments, reflecting the mood of his members.
Scrap the cap
Meanwhile, Starmer faces his first potential parliamentary rebellion in the King’s Speech, set to be delivered on 17 July, after the Socialist has gone to press.
Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside Kim Johnson has stated her intention to table an amendment to scrap the two-child benefit cap. The number of children whose families lose out on benefits as a result of the policy introduced by the Tories in 2017 has increased to 1.6 million. In advance of the general election, Starmer’s Labour leadership abandoned its pledge to scrap the cap.
Such is the scale of Labour’s majority, Starmer will win the vote.
New Deal for Working People
But the King’s Speech will set the tone for the first months of government, and among the first bills will be an Employment Rights Bill, pledged within the first 100 days of office, legislating for the policies outlined in ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering A New Deal for Working People’.
Describing the Labour manifesto, Rachel Reeves said to business leaders, “your fingerprints are all over it”. Comparing the first drafts of the ‘New Deal’ with the final document, those prints are plain to see. “Labour will introduce rights for trade unions to access workplaces… for recruitment and organising purposes”, with the bosses’ caveat now added: “…provided they give appropriate notice and comply with reasonable requests of the employer.”
It is changes like these that provoked Unite the Union leader Sharon Graham to describe the final draft as having “more holes than Swiss cheese”. In fact, what the process does reveal is how Labour will, like any government, govern under contending class pressures, despite Keir Starmer’s commitment to acting in the interests of the capitalist class, and his success in removing potential working-class pressure points in his own party.
The New Deal does include measures that can strengthen trade unions negotiating for their members. Some of these include banning “exploitative zero-hour contracts”, “ending the scourges of fire and rehire”, “basic individual rights from day one”, “establishing a new Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector”, “removing the discriminatory age bands” for the minimum wage, and changing the remit of the Low Pay Commission so it will be set “to take account of the cost of living.”
Some of these only require the secretary of state to write a letter to the Low Pay Commission for example, others will go through the full legislative process and be subject to reviews and so on. But all have points of contention to be fought over. What should the minimum wage level be? What kind of zero-hour contract isn’t exploitative? What possible excuse is there for bosses to use ‘fire and rehire’ whether they give unions notice first or not? The trade union leaders have to take every possible opportunity to fight on all these issues.
In addition to employment rights, the New Deal promises a new National Procurement Plan, mandating ‘social value’ in public contracts, including ensuring trade union rights, environmental standards and to “value organisations that create jobs, skills and wealth”. With Tata Steel threatening redundancies and ending virgin steel production at Port Talbot, why not demand that new rules stipulate that all steel used in public infrastructure projects must be made using UK steel? Better still, to exclusively use steel made in Port Talbot and other steelworks brought into democratic public ownership?
Social partnership
The New Deal points to social partnership in Wales as a model, but there it clearly hasn’t been used to benefit workers. Instead, it has been used to promote the mistaken idea that the trade unions and employers have ‘shared interests’, and that having a seat at the table means there is no need for workers’ struggle. But social partnership hasn’t prevented public sector workers striking against the Welsh Labour government.
In fact, the general election result in Wales gives an insight into how workers in Wales feel about a Labour government sticking to Tory spending limits. There, its vote was down 4% on 2019, despite winning more seats.
Most active trade unionists, for all their likely and justified scepticism about Starmer’s Labour leadership, will correctly see the potential for the New Deal reforms to strengthen their hand, and every opportunity to do so should be seized. The idea that this is a government legislating to strengthen the trade unions can also give confidence to a broader section of workers. But no trade union leader should be allowed to argue unchallenged that the reforms remove the need for workers’ struggle.
Anti-union laws
Above all, it is the level of organisation and confidence to struggle that strengthens workers in the workplace. The New Deal promise to repeal the Tories’ most recent anti-union laws – including the Trade Union Act 2016 and Minimum Service Levels (Strikes) Act – is the change that removes the most barriers to workers taking action to fight in their own interests. The trade unions need to stand firm on the need to repeal these laws in their entirety – most critically the minimum turnout threshold for a strike ballot – and fight for Thatcher’s anti-union laws to be repealed too.
Will there be MPs who are willing to move that amendment to the Employment Rights Act, and to take every opportunity to pursue other demands on behalf of the trade unions too?
Many trade unions have their own formal Parliamentary Groups of MPs who they support and liaise with to promote the unions’ agendas. What is stopping those MPs from being invited to attend the next union executive meeting, or other appropriate body, so that it can be made clear what is expected of them, so demands can be put on them to act in the interests of workers in parliament?
Workers’ MPs
In tabling the two-child benefit cap amendment, Kim Johnson has received support from the PCS civil servants’ union. DWP group president Angela Grant says: “We urge every MP with a conscience to support this important amendment”. Why not make it a condition on others to remain as part of the PCS Parliamentary Group?
Johnson has been a member of the ‘Socialist Campaign Group’ of MPs and listed endorsements for her general election campaign from Unite, FBU, RMT, Aslef, BFAWU and CWU. Demands should be put on her and others to stand up for union policy on things such as meeting the rail unions’ demands in their dispute, and to back renationalisation of Royal Mail faced with an imminent buy-out.
But before the election Johnson was also reported to be part of a ‘New Left’ group that has been formed within the Socialist Campaign Group, including Clive Lewis and Nadia Whittome, who want “distance from the ‘toxic legacy’ of Corbyn” (New Statesman, 26 February 2024) Taking such an approach with Starmer in Number 10 is not going to be in workers’ interests.
There are already MPs who won their seats by not submitting themselves to the constraints of Starmer’s pro-capitalist policies and ruthless party machine. The trade unions should put demands on Jeremy Corbyn, along with the four other so-called ‘Gaza independents’ to act on their behalf, so too the four Green MPs.
Already, before the State Opening of Parliament, there are the outlines of areas in which struggle can develop under this government with its record-low mandate – winning the votes of just 20% of the electorate. There are any number of potential crises ready to erupt, provoking strikes, protests and movements.
With that, there are countless opportunities for the workers’ movement to assert its interests, in doing so increasing the confidence of the working class to struggle. What Labour will ‘give’ the trade unions isn’t decided. What the working class can force the Labour government to concede is all to play for.
