MINISTERS are being irresponsible by refusing to negotiate with trade unions to end public sector strikes, according to Labour’s shadow equalities secretary Anneliese Dodds.
Asked about union pay demands, she told GB News: “The context I would say is quite different in our country, compared to other countries.
“Certainly all countries are impacted by the Ukraine crisis but in our country the impact has been more intense. That’s for two reasons. The first reason is we’ve had 12 years that our economy has not grown at the rates of many other countries.
“It’s grown far more slowly than it did under Labour governments, for example, and people’s real wages have either stagnated or they’ve actually gone down precipitously right over recent times. That’s one big difference between our country and other countries under conservative-led governments.”
Speaking to Anne Diamond and Stephen Dixon, she said: “There’s been months and months and months when Labour has been calling on them to actually sit down with the nurses and get a resolution to this. They refused to do that.
“In fact, they’ve only recently sat down with the Royal College of Nursing over the last 24 hours. And before they did that they actually said they wouldn’t talk about pay.
“Now that’s not the action of a responsible government and it’s why we’re seeing more industrial action in this country, compared with other comparable nations. It’s worse here and I’m afraid the responsibility for that lies with the Conservatives.”
Her comments came after the publication of the results of an poll by People’s Polling for GB News which found that 44% of the public support the strikes while 29% are opposed.
The poll, carried out by People Polling, also showed that 37% of people blamed the Government for the strikes and 28% blamed the unions.
Asked if she was surprised about the level of public support for the strikers, she said: “Strikes are only ever an indication that negotiations haven’t taken place or they haven’t managed to find a deal and they are really disruptive.
“You just talked about some of the kinds of disruption that they caused there, but of course they also lead to workers losing a day’s pay as well so they’re not undertaken lightly.
“And of course, the context for this is a really long period of people’s real wages not increasing and that is fine.
“We’re in a worse situation in our country under conservative governments, which aren’t taking the right approach to this compared to other countries.”
On the risks of wage inflation, Ms Dodds said: “We would be negotiating, that means sitting down and actually getting an agreement, when you have that kind of negotiation it tends to be the case that neither side gets exactly what they want, but there’s a negotiation.
“That’s the point of it in order to achieve a deal which will, for example, in the NHS work for patients, and make sure that we protect the workforce, especially when we’re seeing such high levels of turnover, and people walking away from being nurses because they’re worried about the current situation.
“The second thing that we’ll do is to stabilise the economy, when the conservatives have lost control of our economy. I think that the decision yesterday around having to put up interest rates indicates that there’s a huge mortgage premium now people are paying because of conservative mismanagement, and there’s no plan for growth.
“Inflation is a particular problem in our country’s economy because we don’t have any clear plan for growth from the Conservative government. Labour’s set out plans for a green prosperity plan, how we’d be growing, those decently paid jobs in new green technologies, for example, how we’d scrap business rates and how we get our economy on a firmer footing.
“But again, we’ve not heard that from the Conservatives that our economy is not stabilising in the way that it should be at the moment, Labour would deliver that.”
Her comments came after the publication of the results of an opinion poll commissioned by GB News which found that 44% of the public support the strikes while 29% are opposed.
The poll, carried out by People Polling, also showed that 37% of people blamed the Government for the strikes and 28% blamed the unions.
