The government is effectively asking public sector workers to do their 'civic duty' and accept real-terms pay cuts - a difficult pill to swallow when private sector workers are driving pay increases in the economy.
In October alone, the country lost 417,000 working days to strikes. That's the highest October figure for more than 10 years.More than a million working days were lost to strike action in 2022. It means that the latest bout of strike action has been more disruptive than the 2011 strikes, when public sector workers walked out in a row over pension, costing the economy almost a million working days.
The government maintains that higher pay rises could trigger a wage-price spiral, whereby wages chase prices in the economy, making the inflation problem even worse.Jeremy Hunt"To get the British economy back on track, we have a plan which will help to more than halve inflation [in 2023] - but that requires some difficult decisions now.
The government is effectively asking public sector workers to do their"civic duty" and accept real-terms pay cuts. This is a difficult pill to swallow when it is private sector workers that are driving pay increases in the economy. The ONS revealed that private sector wages increased by 6.9% during the three-month period, while public sector wages rose by 2.7%.
This is leading one of the biggest wedges between public and private sector pay and could compound the problems with recruitment and retention that the private sector is already grappling with.
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