In the week before parliament’s recess and the official start to the summer holidays, the press announced that wages had risen to “record” levels! No doubt this bit of news was meant to offer arguments to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt who is resisting pressure to put up public sector pay and continues to argue that wage rises fuel inflation... Or maybe, something - anything - had to be shown to be growing, given Sunak’s pledges on the economy!
But for workers on strike over rock-bottom wages and years of pay freezes - and with no results to show for it, after 13 months of action - this news of a record “pay rise” (where?) was utterly astonishing!
The Office for National Statistics reported that between March and May, wages rose on average by 7. 3%! That’s even more than the 6.5% rise which the Teachers’ Pay Review Body recommends...
At the same time however, the ONS admitted that with inflation stuck at 8.7% (CPI, but RPI is even higher, at 11.3%) these “record high” wages still remain well below inflation.
It says that “The average worker” (whoever that is!) “saw real regular pay - the change in pay once inflation is taken into account - fall by 0.8% for the three months to May”. So he/she was “theoretically poorer than a year earlier”. One has to wonder what being “theoretically” poor means, as opposed to “really” poor, but never mind...
In fact, workers’ pay is always measured in terms of how much it falls behind inflation, because for the bosses and their statisticians, that is how things are always meant to be! So this time they add unhappily, that it “was the smallest decline in pay in real terms since the end of 2021"!
So whose pay has been going “up”?
If one takes all these pundits at their word, though, and given the ongoing strikes and pay settlements averaging around 4-5% - how does one account for the fact that this quoted “average” increase was 7.3%?
None among the large battalions of workers - neither in the public nor private sectors has seen a pay rise in this period - and many are still in dispute with the bosses or the government. Postal workers, who finally accepted Royal Mail’s pay deal, got a pay rise for 2023 of just 6% - a real pay cut of at least 2.7% for this year. And anyway, most workers have been in pay deficit for many years. Railway workers have had their pay frozen for 4 years by now. So, exactly whose pay went up by a “7.3% average”? The answer to this question speaks volumes for this system, with its institutionalised poverty and screw-turning against workers!
Yes, the “average rise” in pay which the media reports, can be mainly accounted for by the increase in the minimum wage, because so many millions of workers in the private sector and subcontracted sectors are relegated to super-exploitation and paid no more than this pittance!
This April it went up by 9.7% for those over 23, from £9.50 to £10.42/hour. But of course, that still doesn’t turn it into a “living” wage, despite the Tories “rebranding” of it as such. Anyway, it decreases according to age, so that 18-20 year-olds get just £7.49/hour - also after a 9.7% increase..!
Ten percent of very little is very little: nobody can survive on such wages even by working 24/7, given today’s (still) soaring cost of living, and above all, the rising cost of rents and mortgages.
Of course the fact that this phoney rise in wages was reported as if workers were somehow succeeding in their pay claims and strikes is no coincidence. Only one or two papers pointed out that it was the out-of-proportion minimum wage rise that was largely behind the reported ONS figures.
To fight inflation we need a wage rise
It has also allowed Hunt and the commentators for the capitalist class to insist once more, that inflation could well be fuelled by the “rise” in wages... And after all, aren’t we all in favour of “beating” inflation? Yes, as if it was working class spending which “pushed” up inflation rather than price hikes which “pulled” it up!
But what exposes the capitalists’ game of blaming inflation on wage rises is the fact that they have had to admit that the price cap on energy in April, which cut average bills from £356/month to £273/month actually caused inflation to fall by 2%...
It is only a decent wage rise across the board which will help the working class get back on its feet - to pay the (minimum!) 6% rise in rents and mortgages, the still extortionate utility bills and the ever-rising cost of food. So there can be no backing down from this fight. The battle has to continue - in the workplaces and in the streets. And one year later, it’s high time that the ranks of all sections of workers were united - and all out! Because that is the only way to win.