Widespread strikes threaten to drag Britain back to 1970s: Unions flex their muscles in bid to secure workers inflation-busting pay rises
Widespread strikes threaten to drag Britain back to 1970s: Unions flex their muscles in bid to secure workers inflation-busting pay rises
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Good. When your pay and conditions get worse, you ought to strike to resist.
It’s particularly good fun that the specific thing which the right wing press fearmongered about to keep Labour out of power is happening anyway under Johnson’s Conservative government.
Oh here we go. The evil unions are getting uppity and want to ruin the idyll that is modern Albion.
I disagree that young workers are hard to recruit into unions. They are far from that if you use the right language
Tory re election confirmed…. Thanks unions for killing Labour again
dw we can call all the strikers middle-class elites and dismiss anything they have to say.
There’s no good options for addressing the cost of living crisis, unfortunately. At least, not that the Tories will take – increase taxes on high earners, add a wealth tax, use those to create a UBI via NIT, all those would help a lot but aren’t going to happen with this lot in charge. The only way they’d increase taxes is if they found out all the rich were immigrants or trans.
So if there are strikes, that’s bad for anybody whose job or pension relies on whatever work isn’t getting done. If the strikes win, then that’s bad for anyone who buys those products (or relies on them being sold) who is now relatively poorer and demands a bigger pay rise, and we have a cycle. If there are no strikes or they lose, that’s bad for all the workers who’ve had under-inflation pay rises, who are going to struggle to pay the bills.
The parallels to the 70s are striking. And what happened next back then was high unemployment, high (far higher than now) inflation (eg 18%), then high interest rates (15% base rate), higher taxes, and a decade of misery. Only then, we had the benefits of the single market to help us out of it …
When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one
But the union makes us strong
Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever, for the union makes us strong!
I would like a pay raise to even meet inflation.
I frequently mention at work that we should unionise. Our bosses have literally stated that software developers are overpaid.
Guess what roles they are unable to fill.
Would dearly love to go back to the 70’s. Britain was a far better place to live, and work, and bring up a family back then.
Figures those at the Torygraph despised this.
How loaded is that headline?
Not “Poor wages and poor living conditions threaten to drag Britain back”. Not “Decades of shareholder greed, unsustainable growth, and wealth transfer to the 1% threaten to drag Britain back”.
No, it’s the workers that are the problem. It’s their fault it’s fucked. Not the bourgeoise class who are, and have always been, the ones running the show, the ones who have made all the poor decisions that have lead us to this point. No it’s the people who have basically no power and influence who are ruining everything.
Solidarity with them all. If more people went on strike and more often, the working class would have a much better deal.
Do you remember, in her acceptance speech as Tory leader outside NumberTen, Teresa May suggesting workers’ representatives on company boards? The Telegraph’s monied mates soon saw that idea off.