Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
END PAY CAP OR GET BOOT
Unions’ warning to 27 Tory MPS
ANGRY public sector workers are warning Tory MPS in 27 key marginal seats: “There are more of us than your majority.”
Their tough move comes as Labour revealed it is forcing another Commons vote on scrapping the hated 1% public sector pay cap.
Britain’s biggest public sector union, Unison, is spearheading the threat to vote out Tory MPS.
One of them, Royston Smith, has a majority of only 31 yet 2,000 Unison members live in his Southampton Itchen constituency.
Speaking at the start of the Trades Union Congress in Brighton, the union’s general secretary Dave Prentis said: “In June there was a vote in the Commons to end the cap and give teaching assistants, hospital porters, care workers and other public servants rises they need. The Government won by 14 votes. Had a handful of Conservative MPS stood with their constituents and voted to end the cap, the result would have been different.” Mr Prentis revealed Unison is urging 32,000 members to contact marginal Tory MPS. And Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth said: “We’re bringing a vote to the Commons on Wednesday. We’re calling on Conservative MPS who have said they believe the pay cap should go to vote with us.”
Meanwhile TUC general secretary Frances O’grady launched a scathing attack on the Government’s “kamikaze” approach to Brexit with “no action plan to protect jobs and rights and no realistic negotiating strategy”.
CRACKS are appearing in the Tories’ pay cap and Theresa May will deservedly be blown away if she doesn’t lift the unfair limit on wage rises.
The Prime Minister must be one of the few people who thinks it should stay for longer.
Whether through strikes or by trade unions mobilising nurses, teachers, council workers and others in marginal Conservative constituencies to pressure MPS, the pay cap is going.
May’s failure to feel the change in the public mood is more evidence that she’s out of her depth and unfit to be Prime Minister.
Financial justifications for a cap have vanished and recruitment problems in the NHS and classrooms are hurting us all.
Britain deserves a pay rise and that includes firefighters, police officers, soldiers, NHS staff, council workers, civil servants and everybody else forming the backbone of this country.
The one salary we could save is that of Theresa May herself.