Mick Lynch: Proposed anti-strike law shows government has ‘lost the argument’ over wages – UK Politics Live | Policy

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RMT leader says proposed anti-strike law shows government ‘lost argument over wages’

Mick Lynch, General Secretary of RMT, also gave an interview this morning. Asked about the anti-strike law unveiled by the government yesterday, he said the announcement showed that the government had “lost the argument” over wages. He told BBC Breakfast:

What is symbolic of it is that the government loses the argument. They’ve lost the argument about austerity and wages, and the state of our national public services.

Instead they want to end this argument by shutting down the unions and preventing us from campaigning against poverty.

Mick Lynch. Photo: Kirsty O’Connor/PA

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In another interview with PA Media, Mick Lynch, RMT General Secretary, said that the government did not know how to run a railway service. It is to explain:

The railway service is in a desperate situation.

The companies that run them and the government that supervises them have shown themselves to be incompetent and unable to understand and run the railways on a day-to-day basis.

When we are not on strike, passengers are told, at this and every other station, that for lack of staff trains are not running.

At the same time, they tell me at the negotiating table that they want to make thousands of your members redundant.

So, something is wrong with the way this railway is being run. But something is wrong with the way all the public services are run, and that is why the workforce in these services is in rebellion now.

Updated at 10.08 GMT

RMT leader says proposed anti-strike law shows government ‘lost argument over wages’

Mick Lynch, General Secretary of RMT, also gave an interview this morning. Asked about the anti-strike law unveiled by the government yesterday, he said the announcement showed that the government had “lost the argument” over wages. He told BBC Breakfast:

What is symbolic of it is that the government loses the argument. They’ve lost the argument about austerity and wages, and the state of our national public services.

Instead they want to end this argument by shutting down the unions and preventing us from campaigning against poverty.

Mick Lynch. Photo: Kirsty O’Connor/PA

Pat Macfadyen, shadow secretary to the Treasury, was giving an interview this morning. Asked about the nurses’ pay, and whether the business would support them getting a pay raise of about 10% (see 9:19 a.m.), he said that the nurses were “unlikely to get a raise of the magnitude they were asking for.” [ie, 19%]. ” he added:

These are usually resolved at the negotiating table with not everyone getting what they want at first. The problem at the moment is that this kind of discussion is not happening.

Updated at 10.08 GMT

Empty platforms at London’s Paddington station this morning, as trains are not running due to a railway strike. Nurses union boss says she will meet government ‘halfway’ on pay as railway strikes continue

good morning. Yesterday the government launched two initiatives to tackle the problem of striking Britain: On the “stick” side, it announced plans for a far-reaching anti-strike law (although not as far-reaching as it would have been if Jacob Rees-Mogg had been) still in charge, as Pippa Crerar has pointed out and Kieran Stacey in their story), and on the “carrot” side offered talks about a wage settlement next year. The stick is much larger and more durable than the carrot, but the carrot comes as a surprise, and indicates that the minister is worried about the risk of being seen as unreasonable.

Unions are also keen to retain public support, and in an interview with the Times’s Past Imperfect podcast, Pat Cullen, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said explicitly that she would commit to the government “halfway” on the RCN salary demand.

RCN was asking for 5% above the RPI level for inflation. Calculations of RPI inflation vary over time, but the government currently interprets this as a demand for a 19% increase in wages. In her interview, Coleen indicated that she would settle for about half of that. She said:

There’s a rhetoric out there that says the Royal College of Nursing is unrealistic, they’re looking for something completely unattainable, they’re looking for 19%.

Now I could sit here all day and tell you that nurses’ pay has fallen 20% over the past decade. Do you think these nurses are entitled [to 19%]? Sure, I think they deserve 19%. But we also understand the economic climate in which we operate.

And what would I say to Steve Barclay [the health secretary] And to the Prime Minister he walks into a room and meets me halfway here and does the decent thing for these nurses.

Writing in it, the paper said the RCN would accept a wage increase of about 10%.

Cullen has been urging the government for weeks to reopen talks on a wage offer, and in public comments she has always agreed that in negotiations the RCN will not necessarily get everything it wants. But in the past, she has not been so forthcoming about her willingness to split the rift with the government.

The development of the RCN comes as railway union RMT begins another 48-hour strike. My colleague Gwen Topham has the story here.

It seems like a relatively quiet day in politics (other news is available, if stories about dysfunctional family relationships in outdated institutions are your thing), but Rishi Sunak is expected to be in for a visit this morning. And in Scotland, Douglas Ross, leader of the Scottish Conservative Party, is giving a speech.

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Updated at 09.56 GMT

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