Summary
With multiple strikes announced, is the UK facing a Winter of Discontent like in 1978-79? As the Royal College of Nursing announces its first strike in its 106 year history, and with strikes also announced by the civil servant's union PCS, the EIS Scottish teaching union, and the Aslef rail union, the team is joined by former BBC industrial correspondent Nick Jones, who explains the parallels and differences between the political and economic landscape today and that of the late 70s. With more potential industrial action on the way in other healthcare, rail, and postal unions, what can the UK and Scottish Governments do to satisfy public sector pay demands as they face a budgetary black hole?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds |
| 0:02.4 | You're listening to BBC Scotland |
| 0:09.5 | Hi, you're listening to Podlitical, BBC Scotland's podcast that brings you an inside look |
| 0:17.5 | at the big stories coming out of Holyrood and Westminster. |
| 0:20.3 | It is six minutes past one. |
| 0:22.3 | On Thursday the 10th of November, I'm Lucy White, a journalist based in Glasgow. |
| 0:27.2 | And today I'm joined by. |
| 0:28.3 | I'm Phil Sim, I'm a reporter based at the Scottish Parliament. |
| 0:31.4 | I'm Rajseep Sandu, a reporter usually based in Westminster. |
| 0:35.9 | I'm Nick Jones. |
| 0:37.2 | I used to be a labour and industrial |
| 0:39.7 | correspondent for the BBC way back 30 or 40 years ago. So I'll be looking back. Nick, welcome |
| 0:46.8 | along to Podlitical. I always like this part at the start when people introduce their titles |
| 0:52.1 | and then people can guess what it is we're going to be talking about by the guess we've got, |
| 0:57.4 | could we potentially be talking about industrial strife this week? I think that might be what we're doing. |
| 1:02.5 | Yeah, we decided this was the time to talk about the various ongoing pay disputes that are at both the Scottish government and the UK government's door |
| 1:12.5 | at the moment. Yesterday, for the first time ever, nurses in Scotland voted to strike. |
| 1:19.5 | By the time you hear this, you know the outcome of a ballot of teachers or whether they're |
| 1:23.6 | striking or not. We're still waiting for that as it stands at just after 1 o'clock on Thursday afternoon. |
| 1:29.4 | Obviously the Scottish government already been involved in pay disputes this year involving the police, train drivers, council workers. |
| 1:35.7 | That one's memorable because they were out on strike and we had the bin strikes in the summer, particularly affecting Edinburgh during the festival. |
| 1:43.2 | UK government dealing with disputes too, with |
... |
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