Will Labour remember the forgotten local government workforce?

Tomorrow local government workers will make up the majority of those taking part in the largest day of strike action the Coalition has faced. Thousands will be out in force protesting against the government’s punitive public sector pay policy.

The Tories, aided and abetted by their friends in the right wing media, are predictably ganging up against the strike and public service workers.  They are doing everything they can to rubbish our members and attack the few employment rights that we have left.

When Shadow Welsh Secretary Owen Smith spoke out saying that pay in the public sector had been frozen for too long, the backlash from the media was fast and furious. Cameron accused Labour of being the “party of strikes” but it is time for Labour to make up its mind.

Public service workers are people who should be Labour’s natural supporters and they deserve Labour’s unashamed backing in return. Our members and all those taking action need a sign from the Party that they can expect better from a future Labour government. The Tories’ austerity agenda has produced a shocking situation in which the lowest local government pay rates had to be raised just to avoid breaking minimum wage law. Pay freezes in 2010, 2011 and 2012 coupled with below inflation rises in eight of the last seventeen years have sent the pay packets of local government and school workers plummeting.

This year’s offer would result in a cumulative real-term cut of almost 20% for more than a million of those working in local government and schools. The government and employers are calculating that the public have no sympathy for those working in town halls and local government offices. They are derided as pen pushers or faceless bureaucrats, only out to issue fines or collect council tax.

The reality is that local government staff are the unsung heroes of our public services.

They carry out many of our most essential functions up and down the country. They are our teaching assistants. They are the people who are caring for our elderly. They are the lollipop people ensuring the safety of our schoolchildren. And of course they are largely female: 77% of local government workers are women.

The morale of the workforce is already at rock bottom, with local authorities implementing swingeing cuts to services in response to a pathetically inadequate national settlement. And local services simply cannot afford to keep losing staff to the local supermarket or DIY store that pays a higher rate. As a society we need to value and reward our dedicated public servants properly.

UNISON is demanding a £1.20 an hour minimum increase for all. This would bring the bottom rate of pay in local government to the level of the Living Wage, and help restore some of the pay lost across the whole workforce.

Surely that is a demand that we can all get behind – including the Labour Party.

Dave Prentis is the General Secretary of UNISON