UK’s Starmer pledges ‘partnership’ with unions but warns on pay

Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed on Tuesday to restore industrial relations damaged by widespread strike action, becoming the first UK leader to address the annual meeting of British trade unions in 15 years.

The speech, however, came amid early tensions between the fledgling government and major unions over plans to cut energy benefits for millions of retirees.

Starmer’s Labour Party called the speech a powerful symbol that the centre-left party is back in government after nearly a decade and a half of Conservative rule.

“Partnership is a harder way of doing politics,” Starmer said, seeking to end years of strikes and tensions between unions and the previous administration.

The Labour Party has historically allied itself with trade unions, which contribute a substantial amount to the party’s income.

The Trade Union Congress (TUC), a body comprising 48 affiliated unions covering more than 5.5 million workers, helped found the Labour Party in the early 20th century.

Gordon Brown was the last Prime Minister to address the conference in 2009.

“It’s time to turn the page – business and unions, the public and private sectors united in common cause, to rebuild our public services and grow our economy in a new way,” Starmer, 62, told TUC delegates in the seaside resort of Brighton.

He warned, however, that decisions on pay would be shaped by “tough decisions” needed to protect public finances – repeating his mantra that the Conservatives left a terrible economic legacy for Labour when they left office after a crushing election defeat in early July.

“Nobody in this room wants to hear such a bleak forecast, I understand,” Starmer said, adding however that he would not “risk” Labour’s “mandate of economic stability under any circumstances”.

The Labour Party came to power promising to end the waves of strikes over pay and working conditions that had ravaged the country in sectors ranging from railways to hospitals in the final years of the Conservative government.

– Radical –

The government has already announced above-inflation pay rises for public sector workers such as teachers and doctors, and struck a pay deal with train drivers to pave the way for the renationalisation of the railways.

Labour has also put forward proposals to legally ban practices such as “fire and rehire” – where employers dismiss workers and then rehire them on contracts with inferior conditions – and to ban zero-hours contracts, which leave workers without a minimum number of hours to work.

That has sparked concern among some business leaders, while Starmer said his government would also scrap legislation put forward by the Conservatives that sets higher strike thresholds.

The TUC welcomed the pay agreements as a “crucial first step”, but tensions are already emerging between some of the main unions and the new government.

“It’s good to have a Labour government,” Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union general secretary Mick Lynch told AFP.

“But they need to be ambitious, bold and radical.”

The disagreements are partly caused by Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves’s pledge to impose “iron discipline” on public finances to repair what she says is a £22 billion ($28.8 billion) black hole inherited from the Conservatives.

“They have a problem because they created these tax rules,” Lynch said.

“This will make it very difficult for them to deliver what they promised and also what the country needs.”

Lynch was among union leaders who called on Starmer to reverse his government’s decision to scrap winter fuel benefits for 10 million elderly people.

He described it as a “historic mistake”, while Unite chief Sharon Graham accused Labour of choosing to “pick the pockets of pensioners” while leaving the wealthiest “totally untouched”.

pdh/phz/rox