By Tom Barker, UNISON Local Government Service Group Executive member (personal capacity)
UNISON has over 1.3 million members and is the UK’s largest union. It is a organisation with huge potential power, and if its membership were mobilised, it could have the ability to bring Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government to heel.
The union is currently in the process of balloting nearly 400,000 school and council workers to vote Yes to take industrial action against the government in a ballot which ends on 9 October. This is urgently needed, as wages have been held down by almost a third since 2010.
If our trade union movement ignores the living needs of workers, it will only bolster the forces of the populist right and Reform UK, whose opportunist spokespeople will readily seize upon Labour’s refusal to prioritise the needs of workers before the needs of big business.
But it is not just on pay that Labour needs to be challenged. Earlier this month, UNISON published a devastating report entitled Councils on the Brink, which found that Councils across these three nations face a collective funding shortfall of £4.3bn next year (2025/26). UNISON predicted that cumulative shortfall will only develop further if no action is taken and will likely rise to £8.5bn by 2026/27.
The trade unions must do everything within their power to force the Labour government to restore funding grants and provide emergency funding to fill the shortfall. This includes mass lobbying and mobilisations of ordinary union members, but most importantly strike action in those localities affected. According to the report between 2010 and 2023, at least 1,243 council-run youth centres were closed and 1,168 council-run children’s centres were shut. Our communities cannot accept any more austerity!
There are always some signs which point to the potential for a fightback to be built. In the East Midlands, a campaign led by the city’s trade unions is demanding that Nottingham’s Labour-run council refuse to implement further proposed cuts, which most prominently includes the closure of four libraries.
Likewise, in Leicester, the Labour council has faced intense pressure from local campaigners fighting to stop the closure of our city’s much loved adventure playgrounds. Just the other week, a large protest was held outside a full council meeting. This show of strength forced the council to meet some of their demands, including the passing of a motion which pledged them to consider funding the playgrounds from their “surplus non-ring fenced reserves”.
Leicester is not in a good place and is amongst the five councils with the biggest projected shortfalls for 2025/26, with the city facing a £90m shortfall. This is why the Leicester City UNISON branch has been demanding that our council refuse to carry out further cuts and instead campaign for the money we need. This point was made earlier this year when UNISON highlighted the “unusually high reserve balances” in the council’s coffers, arguing that this money should be spent on preventing service cuts and thereby “reducing the need” for the Council to balance the budget on the backs of their own employees. (see “UNISON Leicester City Revenue Budget Response 2024/25,” March 6, 2024)
But partial victories are not enough. To make the voices of working-class people and communities clearly heard (which they will not in Starmer’s Labour), we need to work towards launching a new left, anti-cuts and anti-austerity political party that will fight to represent the needs of the working class. We cannot and will not face another decade of austerity under the Labour Party!
