Today's figures show that living standards for ordinary people continue
to fall while the growth in wealth of a rich minority accelerates. Wages
rose by just 0.7% last month, while prices rose by around 2%.
People are being driven into rubbish part-time, temporary or zero-hour
contract jobs on poverty pay while all the benefits of the "recovery" go
to profiteering employers.
If you include the collapsed incomes of the enforced, fake
"self-employed", living standards have fallen by 12% since the bankers
crashed the economy and got bailed out.
Last week over 1 million workers from 9 unions struck together to
restore lost living standards. In recent years the public sector pay
freeze and the derisory 1% pay cap has cost workers over £2,000. Now its
time for workers in the private sector to join the fight back.
Tory politicians might question the turnouts in strike ballots, but
participation in elections is at an all time low with anti-strike mayor
of London Boris Johnson having won his position on a turnout of just
38%. Tory supported police commisioners were elected on an average turnout of just 15%.
At the strike rally in Carlisle the Labour parliamentary candidate
scored political points against the Tory government, but she didn't
mention that Ed Miliband opposed the strike, or that Labour MPs had
voted to support the Tory 1% wage cap, or that a Labour government is
committed to carrying on Tory austerity policies for another 5 years!
This has got to be the launch pad for further action, against the
erosion of pay and attacks on pensions but also for fully funded public
services, an end to privatisation and a real living wage. In Seattle,
where a socialist was recently elected to the council with 100,000
votes, the workers achieved a $15 an hour minimum wage, so we should be
looking towards a £10 an hour minimum wage in Britain.
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