As Fair Pay Fortnight begins, the unrelenting ferocity of this government’s assault on the pay of working people is plain to see.
That is why it is so important for UNISON members to get out over the next two weeks and support events in your regions.
Using public sector pay as a battering ram for driving down the wages of all workers, the government wasted no time in hitting public service workers with a two-year pay freeze that delivered massive blows to the living standards of members between 2011 and 2013.
A year later, it bolted on a pay cap of 1% to run from 2013 to 2015 Then, not content with pay cuts, the government also put forward proposals to break up national bargaining and drive down pay in the UK’s poorest regions.
UNISON was at the forefront of opposing those proposals and in 2012, the pay review bodies largely rejected them.
But the government returned in 2013 with an extension of the pay cap to 2015 -16 and an announcement that it intended to phase out all public sector pay progression based on length of service.
Last week’s Budget failed to lift the cap with the Chancellor warning of more hard decisions and more cuts – and we all know who will bear the brunt of those.
Last week, local government workers were offered a miserly 1%, with a slightly larger amount for those on the bottom pay scales.
And just days before, we saw the callous decision by Jeremy Hunt to deny even 1% to 60% of health staff.
We know that that both offers have generated widespread anger and frustration, which is why we will be consulting members on where we go from here.
Make sure your voice is heard.
The effect of this government’s policies is that the average worker is estimated to have lost around £4,000 in the vlaue of their pay over the last four years.
For some public service workers, the effect has been even sharper, with inflation draining 16% out of the value of their salaries since 2010.
The consequences can be seen in communities across the UK in the form of increasing debt affecting workers’ daily lives with weekly battles to meet the rent, mortgage, food and energy bills.
Between 2009 and 2012, a further 1.4m workers fell below the living wage threshold and by 2014 a total of 8.8m people (that’s 18% of the total UK adult population) were in serious debt.
UNISON’s own welfare charity, There for You, has seen a massive increase in members turning to it for help to manage their debts or need of emergency cash in desperate situations.
When this all began we were told that “pay restraint” was a necessity to return the economy to growth and tackle government debt.
Despite all the government’s rhetoric, the economy is actually still worth less than it was six years ago and the government’s programme of cuts has locked us into a downturn that has lasted almost twice the length of any downturn since the Second World War.
Meanwhile, government debt has increased by £370bn since the Tories arrived at No 10 and has now hit over £1.2 trillion.
To justify the specific attack on public sector pay, the Tories and their attack dogs in right-wing “think tanks” claim in the media that public sector workers are paid more than those in the private and try to turn worker against worker.
UNISON has consistently rejected these claims as they are based on false comparisons between different types of jobs in different types of organisation and now the truth has finally enmerged.
The Office for National Statistics has taken on board our criticisms, changed the way it compares public and private pay rates, and the mythical public sector pay premium has evaporated.
Of course, Tory “restraint” was never meant to apply to the rich, so the directors of the biggest private companies in the UK enjoyed an average pay increase of 27% over 2012 and shareholders are looking forward to a 27% rise in dividends in 2014.
In February, Barclays Bank shamelessly announced that it was cutting 12,000 jobs at exactly the same time as it increased its bonus pool for top executives by 10% to £2.4bn.
A few weeks later, an Age UK study revealed that 168,000 older people have stopped receiving help with essential tasks such as eating, washing and getting dressed as a result of cuts to home care services.
The pressures on the government’s pay policies are set to rise.
No economy remains in a downturn forever and, with the value of the economy predicted to grow by around 2.5% this year (or 2.7% if you believe the Office for Budget Responsibility), the government’s determination to stop working people sharing in the wealth generated becomes ever more untenable.
Delivering fairer pay is not only a matter of justice for workers who have endured years of declining living standards, it is a necessity for the health of the British economy – bigger pay packets mean greater demand in the economy, more investment and growth.
So get involved in UNISON’s Worth It campaign and show your support for the TUC’s Fair Pay Fortnight. Together we really can make a difference.
