Every single person who works in public services needs and deserves a pay rise. It’s time for the pay cap to be scrapped, for the government to provide additional funding and for employers to put up public sector workers pay. 

I signed a petition to Parliament on this issue a few days ago.  It’s part of the campaign on public sector pay organised by a number of unions, including my own, UNISON. The Petition has so far attracted over 230,000 signatures. This morning the Government responded with the following statement from the Treasury:

“Public sector workers deserve to have fulfilling jobs that are fairly rewarded. On 12 September we announced a move away from the 1% public sector pay policy, towards a more flexible approach on pay.

We still need to deal with our country’s debts to ensure we have a strong economy to enable us to invest in our public services. This means that we will continue to take a balanced approach to public spending.

The Government will consider each specific workforce to ensure pay is set so that we can continue to both attract and hold on to the excellent staff that support our world-leading public services.

Before we make final decisions on pay awards, we will seek the views of the eight independent Pay Review Bodies, which will consider the evidence on how we ensure we attract and retain the very best people within our public services, like giving people more flexibility over their working hours.

They will report in Spring 2018, at which point we will consider their recommendations and announce public sector pay awards for each of those workforces.”

The government response has been to:

• Ignore the critical nature of the problem.
• Divide and rule by stating the pay cap will be lifted for some workers and not others depending on what service they work in.
• Say that the pay cap will be lifted but do not fund it, placing the responsibility on implementing this with the same budget through job losses or other service cuts (in the police and schools)
• Ignore the fact that our public services need investment and are on their knees after seven years of austerity.

More and more staff are leaving the public sector resulting in the loss of billions in staff development and training. In addition to this, public sector agencies fill the gaps using agency staff often at an extortionate cost. In the last few weeks, there have been calls from a number of senior Tory Councillors and local Tory MPs for more investment. At the same time, they have been asking Council workers to accept compulsory unpaid days as a means of balancing their budgets.

After the snap general election, the Conservatives found the money to keep them in power by bribing the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) . Now they’ve found the “Magic Money Tree”, working people deserve their fair share of its fruits.

What can you do?

Sign the petition to increase public sector workers pay 

Attend and help promote the TUC and Northampton Trades Council event: 

Northampton Needs a Pay Rise

Saturday ^21st October  

12pm till 2pm

Northampton Working Men’s Cub 

Sheep Street

Northampton 

NN1 2LZ 

Speakers:

Matt Wrack General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union

Louise Regan President of the National Education Union

Sharon Wilde from the GMB

Lee Barron from Midlands TUC

Alan Hackett from NASUWT

Sara Carpenter from UNITE the union

Penny Smith Northants County Branch UNISON

Support my campaign for selection as Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Northampton North. 

If you want to support me please get in touch using the contact form on the right or by commenting on this post.

If you are not a member of the Labour Party, join today here and help fight for a future for the many not the few.