UK union leader calls for urgent meeting to end ongoing strikes

By Aysu Bicer

LONDON (AA) - The new leader of Britain's national organization of trade unions on Wednesday urged the government to speak to public workers to end ongoing walkouts sparked mainly by a cost-of-living crisis amid soaring inflation and a deteriorating economy.

Paul Nowak, who started the post of general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) last week, said in a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that public services faced years of "underfunding and understaffing," with frontline workers in need of a "fair deal" on wages.

"We can't solve these problems without a fair deal for the people on the frontline," said Nowak, demanding a change in government direction.

"That means talking in an open and constructive way about improving public sector pay. But so far your ministers have refused to negotiate directly about pay with unions," he added.

According to that latest figures by the British Retail Consortium, an association of retailers, UK food prices rose at a record rate in December, hitting an inflation level of 13.3%, up from 12.4% in November.

Talking to Sky News on Wednesday, Nowak said the government has to take some responsibility and step up to facilitate labor talks.

He underlined that the workers he'd spoken to told him they could not afford "another year" of the current level of their wages amid surging inflation. "Their mortgages are going up. The food bills are going up. Their rent and mortgages are going up. The only thing that isn't going up is their wages."

"I think it'd be really good to Rishi Sunak to talk to our unions, but also to talk to some of those frontline paramedics, those physiotherapists, the teachers in classrooms, civil servants -- people who, for the last decade, have been placed under real pressures on workload who feel at a breaking point."