Striking unions hold firm on pay
The Rundown by PoliticsHome
PoliticsHome
4.1 • 105 Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2023
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Prospect union general secretary Mike Clancy, GMB union national secretary Andy Prendergast and Conservative MP Vicky Ford join PoliticsHome’s Alain Tolhurst to discuss the deep strike deadlock between government and unions, as nurses stage their second wave of walkouts, the ambulance service announce six more strikes, and 100,000 civil servants prepare for a major day of action on 1 February, all over over pay and conditions.
Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton for Podot, edited by Laura Silver
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home. |
| 0:10.1 | I'm your host, Alan Tolhurst. |
| 0:11.9 | With me to discuss a raft of new strike action and the government's response to it, I'm delighted to say. |
| 0:15.9 | We'll talk about Mike Clancy, General Secretary of the Prospect Union, which represents civil service professionals such as engineers and scientists and it's currently balloting of industrial action. Andy Prendergast, National Secretary of the National Secretary of the Prospect Union, which represents civil service professionals such as engineers and scientists and is currently balloting for industrial action. |
| 0:23.7 | Andy Prendergast, National Secretary of the GMB Union, whose members in the ambulance service have just announced six more walkouts in their dispute of the paying conditions, as well as Vicky Ford, a Conservative MP for Chelmsford and a former minister in several departments, most recently as Minister of State for Development. |
| 0:38.3 | So I'm going to start, I was originally going to start by listing kind of every strike action that's been planned, but that'll take up most of our time. |
| 0:42.3 | So as we're recording on Thursday, the nurses are currently on the latest of their strikes. |
| 0:47.3 | We've got upcoming strikes by physiotherapists in the NHS. |
| 0:50.3 | Teachers are going to go on strike, ambulance workers. |
| 0:52.3 | As I said, I've got several more days planned, bus drivers. |
| 0:56.1 | Aslef and RMT are both called strikes in February, universities, |
| 0:59.7 | and also obviously civil servants from the PCS union due to strike on 1st February, |
| 1:03.1 | that coordinated day of action. |
| 1:05.3 | Mike, I'll also have publication, Civil Service World, reported this week on your members |
| 1:09.6 | balloting for strike action. |
| 1:10.6 | Do you want to explain why you've got to that point and why your members are looking at going |
| 1:14.0 | on strike? Well, this is the first time we've balloted our members nationally since 2011. |
| 1:19.8 | And in that time, they've experienced around about a 20% real terms cut in their pay. |
| 1:26.2 | I posed this question recently to the government in our most recent |
| 1:29.9 | meeting. Is it your intention to try and continue to run the civil service if you were |
| 1:34.1 | returned to power on the basis of real term cuts for another 10 years? And I asked that question |
| 1:39.1 | because essentially the pay system in the civil service is broken beyond repair. Now incrementally, each year when there's been modest inflation, but nonetheless the pay system in the civil service is broken beyond repair. Now, incrementally, each year when |
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