DEPUTY Prime Minister Dominic Raab says the UK government cannot allow unions to win a battle for higher pay as it would supposedly fuel a ‘vicious cycle’ of ‘inflation hurting the people’.
In fact, with inflation nearing 11.9% on the RPI (Retail Price Index) millions of British workers are eating one meal a day and making savage enforced cutback to their standard of living.
Raab shed crocodile tears speaking to Sky News saying: ‘We can’t allow, I’m afraid, the unions, in this very militant way that they’ve proceeded, to win this argument because it will only hurt the poorest in our society.’
The RMT’s second day of strike action went ahead yesterday after talks on Wednesday were deliberately torpedoed by the government.
Commenting on the breakdown, Mick Lynch RMT general secretary said on Wednesday evening: ‘Grant Shapps has wrecked these negotiations by not allowing Network Rail to withdraw their letter threatening redundancy for 2,900 of our members.
‘Until the government unshackle Network Rail and the train operating companies, it is not going to be possible for a negotiated settlement to be agreed.
‘We will continue with our industrial campaign until we get a negotiated settlement that delivers job security and a pay rise for our members that deals with the escalating cost of living crisis.’
As well as refusing to withdraw the redundancy threat, the Tories are rushing through the House of Commons legislation that will allow strikebreakers to work on the railway, where they will obviously need the protection of the police and even the armed forces.
With inflation rocketing, Raab is arguing that big wage increases would help inflation stay higher for longer, eating into the value of incomes. ‘At one level for the union I do understand, they feel their job is to protect their workers,’ he said. But it would be ‘totally counterproductive’ for the rail industry to agree to a 7% pay increase, he added.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has also accused trade unions of ‘bribing’ workers to go on strike ahead of a ‘summer of strike chaos’.
‘Once again trade unions are holding the country to ransom by grinding crucial public services and businesses to a halt. The situation we are in is not sustainable,’ Kwarteng said.
Meanwhile, Education Secretary Nadim Zahawi has said that the ‘threat’ of the education trade unions, that they will take strike action if they don’t get an above inflation wage rise, is ‘wrong’.
Teachers are supposed to stand by and watch as their living standards are decimated and destroyed by rampaging inflation. He added: ‘Pegging wages to inflation – with a war in Europe and with supply chains recovering post-Covid is irresponsible.’ In fact, the Tory regime is rushing through legislation that will allow the government to draft in strikebreakers to break strikes and keep workers on poverty pay.
The British government has set out planned changes to the law in order to make it easier for businesses to use temporary staff to ‘minimise the negative impacts of strikes on the public’, by ensuring that businesses and services can continue operating.
‘Repealing these 1970s-era restrictions will give businesses freedom to access fully skilled staff at speed, all the while allowing people to get on with their lives uninterrupted to help keep the economy ticking,’ Kwarteng added.
The government announced that businesses will need to ensure they hire temporary workers with the necessary skills and qualifications for the roles they are covering. Subject to parliamentary approval, these changes are to be made through a statutory instrument and are set to come into force over the coming weeks and will apply across England, Scotland, and Wales.
The government has also announced that it would raise the maximum damages that courts can award against a union. For the biggest unions, the maximum sum will rise from £250,000 to 1 million pounds.
Workers will not allow this to happen. They must sack the current TUC leaders and bring in leaders prepared to organise and lead a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and a socialist planned economy, whose motto will be ‘from each according to his ability to each according to their need’. It is time to deposit capitalism into the dustbin of history.
