LEADING BRITISH trades unionists have warned prime minister David Cameron that multibillion-pound spending cuts that will begin to hurt seriously in the new year will be “socially divisive and economically dangerous”.
However, they appeared not to row in behind one top union leader’s calls for a national wave of strike actions to oppose the Conservative and Liberal Democrats’ plans.
The No 10 meeting was the first official encounter between the unions and a Conservative prime minister since Margaret Thatcher met with the then Trades Union Congress (TUC) secretary, Norman Willis in 1985 in the wake of the bitter miners’ strike, and that meeting was not a success.
The atmosphere at the meeting was described later as good, helped, perhaps, by the absence, due to bad weather, of Unite’s new incoming general secretary, Len McCluskey. He had earlier called for “a broad strike movement” to combat the coalition’s cuts, which he said were “an unprecedented assault” on the UK’s welfare state and an “explicitly ideological austerity frenzy”.
However, Mr McCluskey was quickly disowned by Labour leader, Ed Miliband, who was heavily reliant on the unions for support during his successful leadership challenge.
“Ed warned about using overblown rhetoric about strikes in his conference speech and this is a case in point.
“The language and tone of [the] comments are wrong and unhelpful and Ed Miliband will be making that clear when he meets him in the near future,” said a spokesman.
Some in the union movement, who plan a monster rally in Hyde Park in March, have paid careful attention to the student protests of recent weeks and those undertaken by UK Uncut, who have targeted businesses controlled by billionaire, Philip Green and Vodafone shops, alleging that both have evaded billions in taxation. The charges have been denied.
Leaving Downing Street, Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary, said: “The UK is currently in the grips of a bleak midwinter.
“Today we warned the prime minister that next year promises to be even bleaker for millions of families and their communities as the spending cuts bite hard and hit jobs and services.
“We made clear to the prime minister our strong view that the spending cuts would both be socially divisive and economically dangerous.”
Demanding more taxes on bankers, Mr Barber welcomed Mr Cameron’s desire to have further meetings in future. His Conservative predecessor, John Major, never once met the TUC formally, though he did meet some union leaders privately.
The TUC is now seeking urgent meetings with ministers about the plans to privatise the Post Office, and changes to public sector pensions.
However, Mr Cameron put down one clear marker immediately, saying that the decision to switch the indexation of pensions from the retail price index to the consumer price index – which is usually lower and which will save the treasury billions over coming years – is not up for negotiations, one of the union leaders present for the Downing Street encounter said privately.
