The Coalition Government keeps telling us that the economy
is “on the road to recovery,” though the evidence shows that the level of
growth is certainly patchy across the UK.
And it is clear that millions of people – struggling to make
ends meet or find a new job or meet their housing costs – have yet to feel any
benefit of the documented upturn.
It is little wonder that, last weekend, many tens of
thousands of people took part in protests in London,
Glasgow and Belfast,
under the slogan “Britain
Needs a Pay Rise.”
Many of the protestors were public sector workers opposed to
the latest (below-inflation) 1% pay offer from the government.
The marches also came only days after industrial action by
health workers – described by one newspaper as “the first strike over pay in
the National Health Service since the 1980s and the first time midwives had
ever taken action.”
The TUC claims that, since 2008, average wages have fallen
by £50 a week in real terms. And the message from it’s General
Secretary, Frances
O'Grady, was that “after the longest and deepest pay squeeze in recorded
history,” it was time “to end the lock-out that has kept the vast majority from
sharing in the economic recovery."
She added: “An economy that finds money for tax cuts for the
rich and boardroom greed, while the rest face a pay squeeze and big cuts to the
welfare system – that any of us might need – is no longer working for the
many.”
Ms O’Grady also made the distinction that top directors were
being awarded 175 times that of the average worker, while five million individuals
are still earning less than a living wage.
"If politicians wonder why so many feel excluded from
the democratic process, they should start with bread and butter living
standards," she said.
Dave Prentis, General Secretary of Unison, told the crowd
"Our people are suffering" and the "best thing" the Government
could do was "recognise the value of the masses of people here today who
have suffered and give them a pay rise."
He added: "Our members didn't cause this recession, our
members didn't cause the failures of the banks."
GMB union general secretary Paul Kenny meanwhile said that,
for many people, living standards were still falling and families and
individuals were "facing the biggest squeeze on their incomes since
Victorian times.”
It seems to me that central government needs to do much more
to put fairness at the heart of its economic and taxation policies.
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