The latest ONS labour market report shows that wages fell in the last quarter by the biggest decline ever recorded by ONS since they started collecting comparable data 2001.
Estimates of employment, unemployment, economic inactivity and other employment-related statistics for the UK.
www.ons.gov.uk
If the TUC don’t think now if the time for a generalised strike (also known as a general strike) then you’d need to conclude that it will never think there is a time for one. But there are 90% of workers in the private sector who are not in a union who also need a pay rise.
Wages have been falling steadily and consistently for the last 40 years. As trade union membership falls across advanced economies wages fall with them. The more union membership falls the more wages fall. At all times and in all places.
You’d think, given the facts and it’s nominal stated role, that the Labour Party would seize the moment. To do so it could call for a new deal for workers with the establishment of mandatory collective bargaining in the key sectors of the economy, strategic wages councils, an end to employment practises that drive down wages - like zero hours contracts - and a strategy to confront the long demonization of unions with unions given a statutory and strategic role as champions of the 99% and to rebalance the economy by preventing a) capital flight and b) further transfers of wealth from the poor to the rich by extracting better wages.
Instead, silence, as idiot right wing economists and Tories fill the airwaves to warn of a wage prices spiral when pay is falling at the fastest rates ever recorded.
