‘THERE could be up to a million people on strike very, very soon,’ Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said yesterday morning.
On the eve of the TUC Congress, which opens in Brighton tomorrow morning, the leaders of the UK’s two biggest trade unions, Unite and Unison, appeared on breakfast television.
Graham told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday: ‘We need a change of government, but I don’t think there will be. Labour have a clear opportunity now. Get some mettle, lay out your stall, show people what you are.’
Condemning the new Tory Chancellor, she went on: ‘Jeremy Hunt, when he was Health Secretary, he wanted the NHS to be in the American trade deal. He has already come out with support for anti-trade union legislation. Be warned.’
Ridge asked Graham: ‘Are we getting close to a coordinated strike action, will there be a general strike?’
Graham replied: ‘Yes, of course we will come together and get the best pay for workers. It just depends on words. Nobody wants a general strike. People can call it whatever they like.’
Ridge pressed on: ‘So we could be seeing general strikes this Christmas?’
‘You can call it what you like,’ Graham replied. ‘Nobody wants to have a strike, nobody wants to have the general strike. But you’ve got to see that this is pure anger that’s happening. And if there are a number of strikes happening at the same time, people can call it what they like, quite frankly.’
Unison general secretary, Christina McAnea, was a guest on the BBC’s Breakfast with Laura Kuenssberg, where, commenting on Unison’s ongoing NHS strike ballot: ‘We’re asking for pay to keep pace with inflation or at least to give people a decent pay increase that means they can live.’
She added: ‘My members who work in the NHS have been given £1,400 flat rate. That’s nothing for most of them. If you’re in the main band or group of professional staff that’s about 4%.
‘This idea that somehow public services are a drain on the economy is so untrue. Public services help to revitalise the economies in local areas, because if you give money to those who work there they’ll spend it in Tesco.’
Asked whether she would want the ‘Labour Party and the frontbench to be with them on the picket line,’ McAnea replied: ‘I don’t think it would make the slightest difference … I’d like them as a party to be with us and I think they will be in terms of fighting for better pay. Whether they’ll physically turn up on a picket line is immaterial.’
She added: ‘When you go on strike and you’re on a picket line, it’s not a game. You’re not there for a photo opp. It’s there because people are trying to make a point and get decent pay.’
New Tory Chancellor Hunt also appeared on the BBC, where he warned: ‘All government departments are going to have to make more efficiencies than they had planned.’
Kuenssberg commented: ‘It sounds like you are preparing the country for a period of real hardship with people seeing their own costs going up and up and up. In contrast to what the Prime Minister said, you are now saying very clearly that public spending might be cut.’
With Hunt now deciding and announcing government policy, Kuenssberg went on: ‘What is the point of Liz Truss PM?’
Hunt replied: ‘I would rather have a PM who is willing to take difficult decisions. To change your Chancellor at short notice is a difficult decision.
‘We are going to make difficult decisions in lots of areas. We have a very, very challenging situation and I think above all, we want candour.’
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