The government must “get real” and raise public sector salaries to end strikes, a Conservative colleague said.
Lord Balfe, who advised David Cameron’s government on a dispute over pensions and austerity, said union members were “not militants”.
Instead, they are “wealth builders” with a legitimate claim to a pay that doesn’t keep up with the rising cost of living.
The government has been asked for comment.
Richard Balfe was David Cameron’s envoy to the unions during a dispute over austerity and helped settle disputes over public sector pensions.
In an interview, Lord Balfe, who is also a former Labor MP, told the BBC that the government needs to increase salaries both in the current financial year and next.
While the government sets public sector salaries, review boards advise on about half of those salaries.
Lord Balfe said they should review pay with a view to an “intermediate award for this year”.
The government has consistently argued that paying public sector workers more could accelerate price increases and that it doesn’t have the money to do so.
However, Lord Balfe said it should “get real”.
“Realize that there are two sides to this argument,” he added.
Strikers, including doctors, pilots and nuclear scientists, “are entitled to a decent standard of living,” he said.
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Lord Balfe, President of the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa), said: “Personally, I have no problem with hard-working people being well paid.”
He added that strikers are “making our country prosperous.”
Paying public sector workers more may mean inflation lasts longer, “but that may be a price we have to pay for money that has been thrown around during Covid and it’s a price we have to afford “, he said.
“A sensible, cool approach will do us much more good,” he said. “In the end her [the government] will do far more harm to the economy by putting it through a series of strikes than by a deal.”
He said it was “a case of common sense” to spend “a few billion” on wage bonuses.
“You can’t just cut workers’ living standards and expect them not to complain,” he said.
Government is there to run society in the interests of its people and it has to “talk to the social partners to make it work,” added Lord Balfe.
He also said Boris Johnson’s strategy to confront the unions and Labor had “completely failed”, partly because what the government had said about strikers was “simply not true”.
Strikers are “not militants, they’re pretty fed up and they want a government that listens to them,” he said
“The Government needs to recognize that most of these people are the creators of wealth and comfort in Britain, a health service, a nuclear industry and the like. And it is in their interest to have a peaceful, stable, democratic and happy country.”
Lord Balfe, who supports Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, added that Mr Sunak “will not win an election if he does not do so”, recognizing this.
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