STRIKE WAVE FORCES THE TORIES ON THE BACK FOOT

Nick Wright Strikes

AS CHANCELLOR Jeremy Hunt stood up to deliver his ‘budget for the rich’ more than half a million workers from nine trade unions were on strike and thousands thronged the streets of towns and cities throughout the country.

Hunt announced that big corporations will harvest £28 billion in tax breaks but public spending – measured against the size of the economy – is set to fall while pay lags behind in a profit-driven inflationary spiral.

Trade union leaders took issue with the chancellor for his failure to deal with the pay disputes gripping schools, hospitals, universities, the civil service, London Underground and the BBC regions.

TUC leader Paul Nowak hammered Hunt for his failure to tackle the ‘longest pay squeeze for more than 200 years.’

‘The elephant in the room is the lack of funding for our public services and the pay rises needed to recruit and retain nurses, carers and teachers’, he said.

And Unison general secretary Christina McAnea weighed in saying: ‘It’s funny how the Chancellor can lay his hands on billions when he wants while insisting the country can’t afford to pay key workers more.’

Government priorities

Jeremy Hunt’s insistence that public sector pay claims are ‘unaffordable’ blew up in his face when it was revealed that defence spending will go up by £17 billion – channelling massive profits to arms firms – while the cost of meeting the pay claims is a broadly comparable to £18 billion.

Step by step, in one sector after another the government is being forced to enter talks with unions.

As the government's divide and rule strategy wilts in the face of the continuing strike wave a sense is growing that the government is on the run.

With the right wing class collaboration wing of Labour now set to secure a two generation grip on the parliamentary Labour Party workers