I am shamelessly taking this from a TUC press release issued this weekend as I think it needs to be known:
UK workers are suffering the longest and most severe decline in real earnings since records began in Victorian times, according to a new analysis published today (Sunday) by the TUC.
This year, workers across the UK face the seventh consecutive year of falling real earnings — a situation that has no historical precedent, says the TUC. Even the pay squeeze of the long depression of the 1920s was shorter. The total decline in earnings since 2007 is over eight per cent, according to the TUC analysis.
The TUC study compares the current situation with four major earnings crises in UK history — 1865-67, 1874-78, 1921-23, 1976-77.
The real wages drops during each of these crises lasted only two years, apart from 1874-78 when there were four consecutive years of falling real earnings. After the initial drops, earnings growth resumed, but now the UK is in the seventh year of financial earnings pain and there has yet to be any let up, says the TUC.
Seven years after the start of the slumps of the 1860s and 1970s, earnings were above their pre-crisis peak. Although after the downturns of the 1870s and 1920s earnings still had not got back to where they had been before the economy went into freefall, the TUC analysis shows that the current pay squeeze is twice as deep as the worst of these episodes (eight per cent compared to four per cent in the 1920s.)
TUC General Secretary Frances O'Grady said: “It's shocking that even the most infamous periods of pay depression in the last 150 years pale into comparison when looking at the current seven-year collapse in earnings.
“The government says the economy is growing again, but there's no evidence of any recovery in ordinary workers' pay packets. Across the country people are struggling to make ends meet, as their pay lags behind prices and there seems to be no end in sight to their financial misery.
“Vast swathes of Britain are long overdue a pay rise. That's why we expect to see tens of thousands join our march next weekend, calling on politicians and employers to help them share in the recovery and start spending again without fear of falling into debt.”
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Can I ask what approach Tax Research takes regarding setting the pay of its employees? How does Tax Research work with the unions of its staff on the matter?
It would be interesting to get a perspective on how it can be done in practice.
When a union has been the right partner to work with I have always worked with unions
When it has not been I have always worked on a straightforward principle of being open and fair and asking for feedback, matched with a policy of always paying above going rates and always exceeding where I have had responsibility for the issue what are now called living wages
It’s always worked
Thanks.
So what is the current arrangement with TR employees? Do you get along well with their union? How do you keep tabs to ensure pay is above going rates? From experience, it takes a bit of effort to stay on top of it.
How many employees does TR have by the way, out of interest.
TR has no employees right now
I have
Other organisations I am involved with gave
And your questions add nothing to understanding on this blog
Obviously it would be great if everyone could have a pay rise, but is it better to have more people employed on lower wages, or fewer people employed on higher wages? The unemployment figures – for example here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10604117 – suggest that people are tending towards the former.
That said, it is scandalous to implement the recommendations of an independent pay review to increase MPs’ pay by 9% next year, when the government ignores the recommendations of an independent pay review to give midwives 1% (which is a real-terms pay cut anyway).
Look up Howard Reed’s work for Unison on the fact that a pay rise for many would pay the UK
Today I posted on “Belief and Beggary”, linking to a Spiked review by Sean Collin of a book by Joel Kotkin on The New Tyranny, which has the effect of making the majority poorer. The review is interesting in the context of your post.
Thanks
Isn’t this one of the reasons for the rise of UKIP? There is an easy argument (I have no idea whether it is correct or not) that the influx of 7 million immigrants since 1997 (according to ONS figures) has caused an excess of labour, particularly at the bottom end of the pay scale. Whilst everyone would like a pay rise, for as long as there are no shortage of people willing (or coerced) to work for minimum wage most businesses won’t increase wages.
And that’s the crux of the 2015 election campaign: everything will come back to immigration.
Yes it would be a good start if the TUC and others decrying the downward push on wages admitted the extent to which this is enabled by the unlimited supply of cheap labour situation, created via ‘free movement’ (in an EU that is not a fixed entity, but continues to expand to take in cheaper and cheaper labour countries) and similar measures via trade agreements.
In short they have set up structures to ensure that workers here are shafted, but the labour movement is still self-silencing on it. (I think Foucault may have had something to say on this sort of counterintuitive but supremely effective phenomenon)
Until there is some sort of telling it like it is, on behalf of those affected, it will continue to be a downward, disempowering trajectory, with all fightback pretty much nullified, including sacrificial strike action.
A question to those who believe that ‘free movement of labour’ is causing wage cuts at the bottom: if this is the case, then given that there is also free movement of labour at the top end – managers, executives etc – why haven’t the wages of those groups fallen? Instead the top 1% of the earnings distribution has continued to explode upwards. This is why I think that immigration has not a lot to do with falling wages at the bottom and middle of the distribution – I think we’d have had falling wages even in the absence of immigration. The problem is more to do with weak trade unions and a lack of collective bargaining in workplaces. To the extent that trade agreements and the European Commission’s neoliberal policies on labour bargaining have undermined this, then Linda is correct, yes.