I don't have any doubt at all that public services are struggling and that they, along with other parts of the economy, are having great difficulty attracting staff. Here is the thing though. Public sector pay has historically been above that of the private sector. Maybe some would call further demands "entitled", but to take the NHS as an example, the pay demand from the nurses union would cost in the region of £9bn, or 5% of the entire NHS budget. Since the creation of the NHS, the average increase in its budget is about 3.5%, so not only would paying the nurses what the union is demanding means that the service wouldn't even be able to carry on as it is, but it would have to cut back in some way in order to afford it. Is that what you mean by improving public services?
Even if real pay is cut by 5%, public sector workforce may need to be cut by more than 200,000 by 2024 to stay within current spending plans | Institute for Fiscal Studies
Public sector workers will receive pay awards of around 5% this year, on average.ifs.org.uk
Bruce you must know that the union don’t for a second think they’ll actually get what they are asking for, so using that as a basis for measuring the value or appropriateness of strikes is a bit silly.
I would be pretty confident that if a response went back to the unions offering staff in England what staff in Scotland are being offered, that it would be taken.
Your opening position in negotiations is never what you would actually accept.
Having said that, the NHS spends somewhere around £3bn per year on agency and a further £6bn on bank hours. A decent portion of that could probably be saved by offering regular staff a decent pay rise.
