(Bloomberg) -- UK trade unions representing doctors, train drivers, local government workers and border staff are among those demanding pay rises as Prime Minister Keir Starmer contends with a fresh wave of strikes, despite making efforts to end industrial action an early priority for his government.
Since taking office six weeks ago, Starmer’s administration has made a series of pay offers to unions in an attempt to resolve the walkouts that dominated much of his Conservative predecessor Rishi Sunak’s premiership. Yet by accepting better pay deals for some unions, the Labour government is now facing the prospect of other workers threatening strikes unless their terms are improved too.
Starmer’s vow to fix industrial relations and improve Britain’s faltering public services saw him sign off on a pay deal for junior doctors worth 22% more on average over two years, and a 5% backdated rise for train drivers in the Aslef union. He had wanted to act after seeing Sunak’s failure to prevent industrial action hamper his ability to keep key promises to voters, such as on reducing health care waiting lists.
Yet the premier came under pressure from the Conservative opposition this weekend as more unions vowed strikes. Train drivers working on the rail line between London and Edinburgh plan to walk out every Saturday and Sunday for three months from the end of August, while the Rail and Maritime Transport Workers Union is seeking parity with the Aslef offer, and local government unions have requested new talks on pay.
Border Force officers at Heathrow Airport said they would walk out from the end of the month, while the Telegraph newspaper reported that family doctors are demanding an 11% hike in their funding.
“The unions are already running rings round Labour,” the Tory Shadow Transport Secretary Helen Whately said on X.
The danger of spiraling industrial action provides the next challenge to Starmer’s start in office, as he tries to maintain an improving economic outlook of slowing inflation, rising employment and steady growth. That’s even as Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves warns of looming tax rises at the October budget due to a multi-billion pound hole in the public finances.
The weariness of many Britons was laid bare in a poll by Ipsos on Monday which showed more than half the public think the country is “moving in the wrong direction,” despite the landslide victory for Starmer’s Labour just last month. The premier’s net approval rating has dropped slightly to zero from plus seven points immediately after the election. His first month in office was defined by riots by far-right agitators, which now seem to have dissipated but nonetheless exposed social divisions.
Starmer and Reeves will now have to judge whether further pay awards are affordable after the chancellor claimed to have found a £22 billion gap in government spending this year. There is also the question of whether rises across the board might have an inflationary impact that could complicate the Bank of England’s path on cutting interest rates.
Yet Reeves has also spoken of the cost of not resolving strikes to the economy and the public finances, in terms of lost economic growth and greater pressures on services.
Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds denied workers would keep demanding higher wages, speaking to Times Radio on Friday. “We promised we would sit down and find solutions, and people expressed skepticism about that, but actually that’s exactly what we’ve done in government,” he said.
With parliament on recess in August, the government is looking to project a tough stance on law and order in the wake of the earlier unrest. The Home Office on Monday announced a new policy to allow people to anonymously hand over machetes to the police before new laws banning the weapons come into force in September.
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