Is clash over pay with NHS staff and teachers likely?

With apologies for dropping such a clangingly awful cliche, but are we in for a... summer of discontent? Reports suggest that the pay review boards for teaching and NHS staff have completed their annual deliberations.

- SEAN O'GRADY

They are recommending pay rises for these two groups of around 4 per cent and 3 per cent respectively. But the government has only budgeted some 2.8 per cent extra in each case, leaving the gap – a substantial one given the numbers of staff involved – to be found from existing budgets. The unions have threatened strike action…

Does the government have to pay the awards?

No, but there is an almost contractual expectation that any government will. That’s because these pay review bodies, ironically given the recent record, were designed to take industrial action out of the process of setting pay in vital public services.

The idea was, and is, that conventional free collective bargaining between the unions and employers (ie ultimately the government) is replaced by referring the issue to “pay review boards” – committees of professional experts and economists who take evidence from interested parties, assess supply and demand, and make a recommendation. In return, the unions and government agree to abide by the review board’s decision.

The extreme example is the armed forces: they cannot strike by law, but in return, there is no question of dishonouring the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body.