‘We would fight any attempts to impose a wage freeze,’ UNISON warned yesterday in the wake of Chancellor Gordon Brown’s call for public-sector pay rises to be pegged at two per cent.
Paul Kenny, GMB Acting General Secretary warned: ‘The last government that tried to suffocate low paid public sector workers, whilst at the same time allowing unbridled greed from Directors, failed and fell.
‘I urge the Chancellor and the government not to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.’
UNISON pointed out that even on the government’s preferred CPI indicator, ‘inflation has been running at more than the government’s two per cent target for four consecutive months’.
In fact, workers are well aware that Brown’s figure is a fantasy when basic bills such as gas and electricity are going up at least 15 per cent.
UNISON has submitted evidence to the health service pay review body over the last two months to back its claim for a ‘substantial’ pay rise.
The TGWU said that ‘a key issue in the public sector was tackling low pay and pensions and ensuring, through the local government financial settlement, that council workers would have a proper future to look forward to’.
Peter Allenson, TGWU national secretary for public services, added: ‘Two per cent of nothing doesn’t amount to much and barely scratches the surface of the problems of tackling low pay.’
TUC Chief Economist Ian Brinkley said: ‘When considering pay increases for the year we would recommend that employers use the retail price index whether in the private or public sector.
‘The Retail Price Index is the most comprehensive measure of the cost of living and is used as the basis for most wage negotiations in the private sector.
‘This measure should also provide the basis for wage negotiations in the public sector.’
Brown has also stressed in a letter to former CBI boss Adair Turner that the financial assumptions made in his Pensions Commission calculations are wrong.
Brown is opposed to any restoring of the link between pensions and wage increases, preferring a link to government-reckoned inflation.
At present, Brown favours the means-tested Pension Credit but wants that linked to inflation.
He told Turner that he ‘should not assume’ the link between the Pension Credit and earnings ‘will continue beyond 2008’.
New Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton has also stressed any long-term settlement on pensions must be ‘affordable’.
Hutton said in a speech to the IPPR think-tank yesterday that ‘the primary responsibility for security in old age has to rest with the individual and their families’.
He added: ‘An active welfare state must provide a floor below which no-one should be allowed to fall but its primary role must be to enable people to provide for themselves, giving everyone the opportunity to build a decent retirement income that meets their needs and expectations.’
