Waves of strikes 'would just alienate the public'

HE may have the unions to thank for winning the Labour leadership election, but Ed Miliband has made it clear he will not support “waves of irresponsible strikes”.

During his speech to the party’s conference he told delegates that they had to win public support and avoid alienating people by adding to the book of “historic union failures”.

With union leaders sitting in the conference hall to hear his first keynote speech as leader, Mr Miliband said: “That is why I have no truck, and you should have no truck, with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes.

“The public won’t support them. I won’t support them and you shouldn’t support them either.”

Mr Miliband said it was vital that workers had a voice to speak for them, telling delegates that during the leadership campaign he met a group of dinner ladies who had to buy their own uniforms and had their shift patterns changed at a moment’s notice.

And he went on to demanded responsibility from business as well, stating that he had recently met a care worker in Durham doing “one of the most important jobs in our society”.

“If it was my mum or dad, I would want anyone who cared for them to be paid a decent wage.

“But she was barely paid the minimum wage, and barely a few pence extra for higher skills. She told me that she thought a fair wage would be 7 an hour because after all she would get that for stacking shelves at the local supermarket.

“I believe in responsibility in every part of our society. That’s why I believe in not just a minimum wage but the foundation of our economy in the future must be a living wage.”

Mr Miliband said the tax system should reward responsibility, as he called for a living wage, high quality apprenticeships and family-friendly employment.

And he was met with loud applause when he said the gap between rich and poor mattered, saying: “It doesn’t just harm the poor, it harms us all. What does it say about the values of our society, what have we become, that a banker can earn in a day what the care worker can earn in a year?”

Unions have been campaigning for increases in the national minimum wage, arguing that workers needed a living wage to survive.

Unite joint general secretary Tony Woodley said: “Ed Miliband has addressed head-on those concerns which have cost this party five million votes since 1997 – the illegal war in Iraq, insecure jobs, the sense that despite all the good things Labour did to make Britain a fairer place, that the government stopped being on their side.”

And Unite’s joint leader, Derek Simpson, said: “Labour’s centre forward just scored a hat-trick. Ed is the new signing to relegate the Tories. This was a speech worthy of the next Prime Minister and it’s why Unite backed him.”

However, Rail Maritime and Transport union general secretary Bob Crow was more critical, claiming that Mr Miliband was “already caving in to pressure from the right-wing Press”.