There’s an interesting nugget about German trade union strategy in today’s FT (‘German unions seek pay rises on back of recovery’). This notes that, in negotiations for 110,000 steelworkers, due to begin on August 27, IG Metall, Germany’s biggest union, will focus on pay rises and a reduction in contract labour, rather than job security. The union agreed a two-year pay deal for engineering workers in February, including a one-year pay freeze and a 2.7% rise in 2011, in exchange for guarantees of job security.
Confidence in the recovery of Europe’s biggest economy is such that the focus can now move from protecting workers’ jobs to ensuring they get a fair share from the future economic upturn. IG Metall boss Berthold Huber also rightly points out the role of faster wage rises in stimulating domestic demand. Read more »
George Osborne’s announcement that public sector workers will face a two-year pay freeze will be met with wide-spread consternation. To expect 4.3m hard working public servants to take a pay freeze at a time when, as IDS report, Britain’s directors have just pocketed an inflation busting increase of 7% , on top of a 22.5% hike in bonus payments, beggars belief.
Let’s be clear – when you factor in inflation, this isn’t a pay freeze, its a pay cut.Read more »
Recruiting more workers into unions and winning large national collective agreements with employers can help reduce inequality, even when the political climate doesn’t look too bright. A TUC seminar on the future of National Collective Bargaining on 9 June will be an opportunity to talk about how trade unionism can make a difference, even when the political scene doesn’t offer many opportunities.
Over the next few years it looks as though it is going to be harder to persuade the government to take the lead in using the tax and benefit system to reduce inequality. Ministers may genuinely want to make progress, but the commitment to cutting spending seems to trump all other considerations.
Obviously, everyone campaigning against poverty will continue to argue the case for redistribution, but there’s work to be done that will have a more immediate effect. Read more »
I almost fell off my chair when I read the headline above in The Observer. Could it be that the Lib-Cons were about to break the taboo and look at the real cause of poverty - low pay? No such luck unfortunately: one review of public sector pay and a separate one on poverty.
Today’s Friday film comes from the Fair Pay Network, a coalition of 15 organisations (including the TUC), looking to raise awareness of the issue of poverty pay during the run up to the election. Read more »
Friday fun for you in the form of a little ditty (with a serious point, natch) about exploitatative internships. It’s part of a new TUC campaign looking into improving the lot of the UK’s interns: rights for interns. Read more »
Unions are increasingly working with the environmental movement. We represent – or stand in solidarity with – many of those most likely to be badly hit by climate change. Union campaigns for health and safety in the workplace have always had much in common with wider campaigns against pollution. Many environmentalists have a similar commitment to social justice and internationalism that inform the best kinds of trade unionism – the victims of environmental degradation are usually the people for whom unions speak. Unions know that we need big changes in the way the economy work – and have helped put the concept of just transition on the international agenda.
Today the Resolution Foundation launches two reports exploring the financial health of low earners. The Low Earners Audit takes an overview of how the UK’s 7.2 million households living on below median income but independently of state support are faring in the recession. Behind the Balance Sheet complements this overview by going beyond the front door and exploring how low income households juggle their money on a daily basis.
Month after month the Labour Market Statistics drive home the point that it is the UK’s 9.4 million working age low earners, not the middle class bankers, who have been worst hit by this recession. As a report we published last year showed, unemployment increases have been steepest in industries and occupations where low-skilled, low paid work is concentrated. People in typical low earner occupations are more likely than others to remain out of work for more than six months. Read more »
There are many causes behind migration. One of the commonest cited is skill shortages. But as liberal economists argue, that’s often a misnomer. All that is in fact happening is a wage shortage: raise the wages and sufficient skilled workers will appear. Today, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and KPMG have issued a report today which suggests the liberal economists are right. They say that employers facing skill shortages would employ more British workers if they could pay them less (rather suggesting the skills are available, but at a price employers don’t want to pay).
Exploiting migrant workers to undercut the existing workforce simply sets worker against worker. And whilst employers may benefit in the short run from lower wage costs, the BNP are more likely to be the long term beneficiaries.
Instead, unions have been arguing that paying migrants the same as the existing workforce (and giving them all the other rights we have won over the years) is the best way to combat exploitation, undercutting and racial strife. The national minimum wage has had some effect in making undercutting less possible, but the CIPD take potshots at that, too. Read more »
Reporting of pay trends in recent months has fallen back on a bunch of shared assumptions about what people have been paid last year and are likely to be paid this year. Unfortunately a lot of them are just plain wrong.
Here’s my top ten pay myths – see how many you can spot in your favourite newspaper: Read more »
The Institute for Fiscal Studies published their Green Budget last week in which they look at the Chancellor’s options in the forthcoming budget. It is not exactly a bundle of laughs.
But they do have an extremely useful round up of trends in public sector pay. Richard has already drawn attention to their statement:
Overall, pay levels in the public sector are probably not significantly out of line with those of similar workers in the private sector, once you take into account factors such as their age, education and qualifications.” Read more »
The detail of what has been happening to pay and the outlook for the coming year will be discussed in detail at the IDS/TUC pay conference on 16 February.
It is a strange logic that concludes that a financial crisis that started in the top echelons of banking should be resolved by freezing the pay of nurses, teachers and social workers. Yet since early last year a growing clamour of voices, led by much of the press and then followed by many shades of politicians, have called for public sector pay freezes to resolve financial instability caused by the economic crisis. As part of this process there has been a widespread misreading of the official earnings statistics to try to show that all public sector workers earn more than all private sector workers. Read more »
