Strikes: will ‘divide and rule’ tactics break the impasse with unions?

Rishi Sunak’s personal intervention in brokering talks with nursing leaders has led to accusations that No. 10 is engaging in “divide and rule” tactics to try to split the union movement.

In an “extraordinary intervention” a senior Downing Street official representing the prime minister made a “serious” pay rise offer to Pat Cullen, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) general secretary, the i news site said. According to the paper, the move led to Cullen postponing “what would have been the most serious walkout yet next week”.

What did the papers say?

Downing Street has shared little in public about its talks with the RCN, said the Daily Mail, “but privately, ministers believe they have the chance to split the union movement – and put Labour on the spot – if they can persuade the nurses to settle”.

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The PM’s unexpected intervention reportedly opened the door for “intensive talks” between Health Secretary Steve Barclay and Cullen in Whitehall yesterday. The upshot was a potential deal for a one-off payment for nurses this year and an enhanced pay offer going into 2024.

Rachel Harrison, national secretary of the GMB union, described the government’s offer of talks with the RCN, to the exclusion of other unions, as a “back-room deal” and a “tawdry example of ministers playing divide and rule politics with people’s lives”.

A source at the Department of Health and Social Care told The Guardian that the department rejected the claim that Barclay is trying to “divide and rule” the health unions by holding “intensive” pay talks with only the RCN.

Sunak’s “direct intervention” came about due to his concerns about “the impact of the 48-hour strike planned for next week (now called off)”, said Politico. That, coupled with the fact that nurses have strong public support for their strike action, may have forced the prime minister’s hand, the Mail said.

An unnamed Whitehall source told the Mail that negotiating with nurses “feels much less political… they have been much more receptive to potential changes and, bluntly, they are more popular with the public.

“If we can do a deal with them – and it’s still a big if – then it gets harder for the other unions to explain why they are still striking, and harder for Labour to keep sitting on the fence,” the source added.

What next?

Ministers have now been “given the freedom” to discuss pay settlements that could include backdated or one-off payments in a bid to end the escalating public sector strikes, The Guardian said.

However, Downing Street has insisted that all talks can only proceed if strike action is called off, as the RCN did on Tuesday.

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has now invited teaching unions to reopen “substantive formal talks” on pay, conditions and reform, but – in line with No. 10’s new guideline – only if the National Education Union called off walkouts set for next week.

The Treasury has insisted that in all talks any pay increases above the 3.5% maximum planned for 2023-24 must come out of existing budgets, “which could force departments to find billions in savings”, The Guardian said.

Despite the complexities of the negotiations that lie ahead, at the very least the mood appears to have shifted, said the BBC’s Chris Mason. “There is a more conciliatory mood in the air. The tone and the tenor of what ministers and their teams are saying feels a little warmer,” he said.

However, “that doesn’t mean all of these strikes are suddenly going to stop”.

Unions continue to point out that any proposed pay rise must take into account that due to the impacts of inflation and pay freezes their members have been suffering real-terms pay cuts for years.

Responding to accusations that the talks are happening too late in the day, Sunak’s allies told the Financial Times it had taken several months for both sides to “understand each other’s position” but the prime minister now wanted to “move decisively to bring the strikes to a close”.

Picking up on the frustration over the delay in getting to this point, Labour pointed out that significant disruption could have been avoided if the government had negotiated sooner. Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: “Had the government agreed to these talks two months ago they could have prevented 140,000 appointments being cancelled as a result of strike action.”