From pandemic solidarity to bitter enemies: how Tories turned on workers
A little more than two years ago Rishi Sunak stood outside 11 Downing Street flanked by the head of the TUC, Frances O’Grady, and Carolyn Fairbairn, the boss of Britain’s leading employers’ group, the CBI. The photo op was meant to demonstrate a new spirit of tripartite solidarity that would help see Britain through the pandemic.
The TUC had played a big part in plans for the furlough wage subsidy scheme and the chancellor was eager to show his gratitude. Announcing the government’s emergency economic package to parliament, Sunak thanked the TUC for its “constructive conversations” with the Treasury.
That spirit of consensus has departed. The talk of a new era of “beer and sandwiches” – shorthand for the days when ministers, organised labour and employers sat down to seek agreement on pressing issues – has been replaced by union bashing. Sunak now accuses the rail unions of being irresponsible for taking industrial action over pay, jobs and working conditions.
The government’s openly aggressive approach to the unions is relatively recent and was certainly not evident at last year’s Conservative party conference, where Boris Johnson said he was “pleased” to see wages rising faster than before the pandemic began. There was, the prime minister added, going to be no return to the “same old broken model” of low wages, low skills and low productivity. The message was clear: the Conservatives were on the side of the workers.
Tony Wilson, director of the Institute for Employment Studies thinktank, says he is not surprised that relations between the government and the unions have soured. “It was always a false dawn that the furlough scheme was going to herald a new era of partnership. It was a marriage of convenience.”
Three things
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