Grahame Morris writes:
We are now in the second week of the Fair Pay Fortnight which is raising awareness about Britain’s cost of living crisis.
Upon taking office in 2010, the Coalition Government promised to “make work pay”.
However, those in work have seen an assault on their living standards, with full time UK workers earning on average £2,084 less a year than they were in 2010.
The TUC has organised the Fair Pay Fortnight to deliver one simple message – Britain needs a pay rise.
The UK has one of the highest shares of low paid workers in the developed world, with more than one in five working in low paid employment.
The erosion of collective bargaining and the attack on Trade Union activities has led to a decline in wages.
In 1975 the proportion of national income going on wages was 65%, by 2011; this had fallen to 53.7%.
In the meantime, the share of GDP going to shareholders has soared, with Will Hutton arguing that 5% to 7% of GDP has moved permanently from the workforce to shareholders.
The last two decades has seen the wealthiest 0.1 percent incomes grow nearly four times faster than the least well off 90 percent of the population and recent research by Oxfam revealed that the UK’s richest five families have a greater combined wealth than the poorest twenty per cent, or 12.6 million people.
The stagnation of wages and the higher costs of living are pushing more people into the welfare system at a time of public spending restraint.
The Government’s solution to higher welfare spending is to cut support for those in need, while doing nothing to address the underlying problems.
We have seen benefit cuts, the disabled fined for having a spare bedroom, and now the welfare cap.
The Government seeks to divide the nation portraying their welfare changes as a fight between the strivers and skivers.
But this is a false division, the reality is that most people on benefits are in work, and it is working families that will be hit by the welfare cap, and the Government’s plan to cut a further £12 billion from social security.
Those in work should be paid a living wage that affords them decent housing and enough income to live independent of the welfare system.
However, poverty pay and a lack of house building has left the taxpayer subsidising wages and paying benefits to landlords.
The UK is in crisis, and the system is failing, when two thirds of children in poverty live in working households, and when the vast majority of new housing benefit claims are made by households containing working adults.
The much vaunted economic recovery does not exist for the majority of people, and will not start until we get more money to working people.
The only way to secure a strong and fair recovery is to ensure that the wealth creator, ordinary people working day in day out, are paid a living wage and can afford decent housing.
Britain needs a pay rise.
We are now in the second week of the Fair Pay Fortnight which is raising awareness about Britain’s cost of living crisis.
Upon taking office in 2010, the Coalition Government promised to “make work pay”.
However, those in work have seen an assault on their living standards, with full time UK workers earning on average £2,084 less a year than they were in 2010.
The TUC has organised the Fair Pay Fortnight to deliver one simple message – Britain needs a pay rise.
The UK has one of the highest shares of low paid workers in the developed world, with more than one in five working in low paid employment.
The erosion of collective bargaining and the attack on Trade Union activities has led to a decline in wages.
In 1975 the proportion of national income going on wages was 65%, by 2011; this had fallen to 53.7%.
In the meantime, the share of GDP going to shareholders has soared, with Will Hutton arguing that 5% to 7% of GDP has moved permanently from the workforce to shareholders.
The last two decades has seen the wealthiest 0.1 percent incomes grow nearly four times faster than the least well off 90 percent of the population and recent research by Oxfam revealed that the UK’s richest five families have a greater combined wealth than the poorest twenty per cent, or 12.6 million people.
The stagnation of wages and the higher costs of living are pushing more people into the welfare system at a time of public spending restraint.
The Government’s solution to higher welfare spending is to cut support for those in need, while doing nothing to address the underlying problems.
We have seen benefit cuts, the disabled fined for having a spare bedroom, and now the welfare cap.
The Government seeks to divide the nation portraying their welfare changes as a fight between the strivers and skivers.
But this is a false division, the reality is that most people on benefits are in work, and it is working families that will be hit by the welfare cap, and the Government’s plan to cut a further £12 billion from social security.
Those in work should be paid a living wage that affords them decent housing and enough income to live independent of the welfare system.
However, poverty pay and a lack of house building has left the taxpayer subsidising wages and paying benefits to landlords.
The UK is in crisis, and the system is failing, when two thirds of children in poverty live in working households, and when the vast majority of new housing benefit claims are made by households containing working adults.
The much vaunted economic recovery does not exist for the majority of people, and will not start until we get more money to working people.
The only way to secure a strong and fair recovery is to ensure that the wealth creator, ordinary people working day in day out, are paid a living wage and can afford decent housing.
Britain needs a pay rise.
"Britain needs a pay rise"
ReplyDeleteWork harder and you might get one.
Says a man who has never had a job. Like every member of the present Cabinet, in fact.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI have had a job since I was 17.
And, unlike the author of this blog, I still have one.
You are right, I do not only have the one.
ReplyDeleteDavid Lindsay is a typical socialist.
ReplyDeleteAn unemployed political geek.
You should be a Labour Cabinet a Minister.
I am none of those things, and there are sadly none at all of the last. For the time being.
ReplyDelete