Wages are flatlining while bills skyrocket. This is a wages crisis and working people deserve better.
Just this week, the Office for National Statistics confirmed that the real value of average wages (once inflation is taken into account) has fallen by almost four per cent since a year ago.
It’s no wonder that we’re all feeling poorer, because we are poorer. Just recently inflation almost hit 12 per cent.
Our bills are soaring, energy, childcare, food and fuel, but pay is flatlining. The Tories promised a high wage economy, but the reality is anything but. This Government, distracted by its own internal warfare, is standing by while the country gets a pay cut, on top of 12 years of austerity.
The country clapped for the key workers who put their lives on the line to keep the country going during the pandemic, but now the Government is giving public sector workers a below-inflation slap in the face.
The postal workers who keep our country connected have had a two per cent pay award (otherwise known as a pay cut) imposed on them, while the Royal Mail group made £758m profits, and handed £400m to shareholders. It’s no wonder that 97.6 per cent of CWU members voted yes to strike action this week.
Working people across the country are standing together to say they have had enough. And when they are left with no choice but to take industrial action to defend their jobs, pay and safety, we stand with them.
It doesn’t matter who wins the Tory leadership contest. The Tories have presided over more than a decade of decline, and whoever wins it will be more of the same. Neither Sunak nor Truss has a plan to make life better for working people and their families.
We need a Labour government. Labour’s new deal for working people will raise wages and put power back into worker’s hands by strengthening individual and collective rights.
Enough is enough, we need a new deal for working people.
Rodney Sadd
Union delegate – South Holland & The Deepings CLP
