Responding to reports the chancellor of the exchequer is preparing to impose a pay cap on most public sector workers, UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis said today :
“Key workers across all public services remain at the heart of the fight against Covid.
“Reports of pay restraint for all but frontline NHS staff would be a cruel body blow to other health, care and public service employees working tirelessly to get us through the pandemic. It would also backfire badly with the public.
“The government must do what’s right next week and announce the wage rise all staff have more than earned. Anything less risks destroying morale when the entire country is counting on them.”
This morning’s press reported that the Chancellor is to freeze the pay of public sector workers as he presents his spending plans for the next financial year next week.
The chancellor is expected to say it is only fair that public-sector wages are frozen when many of those in the private sector face significant pay cuts or the loss of their jobs.
Nurses, doctors and other NHS workers would be exempt from the pay freeze in recognition of the role they have played during the pandemic
Unite assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail said: “For the last nine months of the pandemic, public sector workers have kept the NHS running, the schools open and refuse being collected – these are the very same workers who have had their pay held down in real terms during a decade of Tory austerity.
“It should not be forgotten that more than an estimated 600 NHS and social care workers, often on low pay, have died from causes linked to Covid-19.
The government is on course to borrow close to £400 billion this financial year, the highest borrowing relative to the size of the economy since World War Two.
