Real regular pay (wages adjusted for prices & bonus payments) across the board was 2.8% lower in the three months to May than in the same period of 2021 - the sixth monthly decline in a row, & the biggest drop since modern records began in 2001.
The latest ONS figures show total pay growth of 7.2% in the private sector compared with just 1.5% in the public sector. Many unions are threatening strikes if the Govt holds pay rises below 5% for the current financial year, while inflation is above 9%.
Boris Johnson’s cabinet is on today (Tuesday) due to sign off on wage settlements covering 2.5 million public sector workers, in one of the most significant decisions left to be taken by his caretaker government.
Unions representing teachers, health workers & civil servants have warned of widespread disruption if ministers approve further real-terms pay cuts for the coming year.
Today's data reveals the almost fivefold disparity between private & public sector pay growth.
Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT teachers’ union, accused ministers of “contempt” for public sector workers. “If the government hopes that teachers’ anger will dissipate over the course of the summer break, they are wrong.”
The number of unfilled jobs edged up to a record of 1.294mn, although the ONS said the rate of growth in vacancies had slowed.
Growth in average weekly earnings, including bonuses, was 6.2% in the three months to May, equivalent to a real-terms pay cut of 0.9%.
Growth in regular weekly earnings of 4.3% equated to a real-terms pay cut of 2.8% — a record drop.
The tight labour market has given some workers more bargaining power, allowing them to secure bigger wage rises to go at least some way to offset the national #CostOfLivingCrisis.
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In her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein investigated natural & man-made disasters that enabled a more aggressive & ruthless capitalism to form – something she termed “disaster capitalism”...
"Klein’s work brought to light how neoliberal policies are pushed through following disasters, allowing for deregulation & wholesale corporate seizures of public services."
Sorry to write this sentence, but Liz Truss is the ERG's & Global Disaster Capitalists' wet dream.
Britain currently faces multiple crises.
"When comparing Brexit to the events highlighted in Klein’s book, such as the economic crisis in Bolivia that started in the late 70s, we can observe similar patterns emerging in the UK since the 2016 referendum."
Each year for the last 20 years the number of children identified by the National Referral Mechanism has been rising. Last year there were about 5,500 child slaves in the UK - children like Mo, trafficked either for labour or sexual exploitation.
'Some UK-based child slaves freed from bondage by the police go on to be victimised by the courts, who – not understanding the nature of slavery - charge enslaved cannabis growers, for example, as criminals, sending them to prison and then deporting them.'
Some years ago the coalition of expert organisations Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group, concluded the NRM was institutionally racist: Black African victims seeking to be identified as such had about one third the chance of being accepted as victims as did white European victims.
In 2018, Liz Truss met with representatives of five libertarian groups, including the opaquely funded anti-abortion Heritage Foundation, & the American Enterprise Institute, that aim to shrink the size of the US government & scrap environmental protections.
Truss also met with ALEC, which brings together corporate interests & politicians to draft business-friendly legislation that is then enacted across the US, & a roundtable with Americans for Tax Reform, strongly linked with the UK’s TaxPayers’ Alliance, founded by Matthew Elliot.
The Mont Pèlerin Society's original membership was made up of transnational economists and intellectuals, including Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Karl Popper, Michael Polanyi, & Luigi Einaudi.
From this small beginning, their ideas spread throughout the world, fostering, among other things, the political platforms of Margaret Thatcher & Ronald Reagan & the Washington Consensus, & leading to the potentially catastrophic & #neofascist present.
Read up on Dr Barbara Kolm – President of the Hayek Institute, & Director of the Austrian Economic Center & Free Market Roadshows which evangelise Austrian-School Free Market Economics worldwide with the aim of ‘Disrupting Democracy’.
Kolm plays a key role in influencing most global Libertarian institutions, lobby groups & governments, & is referred to by her own Austrian Economic Center as ‘the Voice of Europe‘. She is VP of the Austrian National Bank, sits on numerous boards & is a University lecturer.
Kolm is a member of the infamous Mont Pèlerin Society, a network of neoliberal intellectuals & a closely related network of neoliberal partisan think tanks under the umbrella of the ATLAS Network (formerly the Atlas Economic Research Foundation) founded in 1981 by Antony Fisher.
Britain's next PM will be an embarrassing inarticulate Thatcher-impersonating free-market fundamentalist US Libertarian billionaire puppet who ignored the British Pregnancy & Advisory Service's requests to publicly denounce the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn #RoeVsWade😬