Britain’s Sunak Looks to Pay Deals to Avert February Strike Chaos

Members of the Cabinet have told Sunak he must act fast to avoid a week of strikes that threaten to bring the country to a standstill, one minister said.

Teachers, civil servants, train drivers and university staff will walk off the job on Feb 1. Nurses and ambulance workers will strike again on Feb 6, intensifying pressures on the teetering National Health Service, Bloomberg reported.

Pay deals are close with rail workers and firefighters, a government official said.

The hope is these agreements would have a domino effect, unlocking talks with other unions and resulting in a quick succession of deals, the minister said, with nurses ending up with a pay rise of about 9 percent.

Union leaders have already lowered their initial demand for a 19 percent increase to about 10 percent.

However, a government official cautioned that rail negotiations are further along, and other sectors would take longer to resolve.

Rail, Maritime and Transport Union boss Mick Lynch has privately been a more reasonable negotiator than some other unions, despite his public image as a left-wing firebrand, according to a person familiar, noting that this didn’t necessarily help ministers seeking deals with teachers and NHS workers.

“We have enormous respect and gratitude for all our public sector workers, especially those in the NHS,” Sunak said this week, adding: “We continue to want to engage constructively in dialog with them.”

At the same time, the prime minister pressed the case for passing his government’s legislation, which would curb public sector workers’ ability to strike by enforcing minimum safe staffing levels.

Royal College of Nursing chief Pat Cullen said this week that she had “extended an olive branch, in fact a whole tree, to the government”, calling on Sunak to meet the union “halfway”.

The strikes were at the center of a clash in Parliament on Wednesday between Sunak and Labour leader Keir Starmer.

The opposition party has sought to project an air of competence with polls showing them heavily favored to win an election that must be held in January 2025 at the latest.

Starmer accused Sunak of presiding over “lethal chaos” as lengthy ambulance waits resulted in heart attack patients dying. Sunak, in turn, pressed Starmer to support the strikes bill, chiding the Labour leader for not taking steps to stop the job actions.

The Treasury is focusing on people outside the scope of the benefits regime where government traditionally has few policy levers, two people familiar with its internal discussions said. It is considering funding to get over-55s back into work based on the “Kickstart” program for young people after the pandemic, and the “Restart” initiative for the long-term unemployed. This could be called “Reenter”, one of the people said.

The effort could include a specialist training program to help people pursue different careers in areas with labour shortages, a more flexible apprenticeship program applying to older people with tax incentives for employers, and expanding the mid-life health checks to show people in their 50s they can’t afford to retire yet.

“With recruitment remaining challenging and vacancies 63 percent higher than pre-COVID levels, venues are doing all they can to hire staff, but we need to see action and investment from government, too,” UKHospitality Chief Executive Officer Kate Nicholls said on Friday. “There are simple solutions available.”

However, the proposals currently under consideration wouldn’t represent radical reform to the labour market, one person involved acknowledged. The Treasury is so far resisting calls from Tory MPs to spend a perceived windfall from lower natural gas prices on major tax cuts in March.

One government insider insisted the Treasury didn’t have a large amount uncommitted money to spend, noting that gas prices remained volatile and tax revenues are expected to fall. Any extra money may be immediately prioritized for defense spending following a coming update to the government’s “integrated review” on security, defense and diplomatic policies, they added.