When the heads of Britain's 100 largest companies went home after work this Tuesday, they had already earned more, in just two days, than most of us will earn over the whole year - £27,200, to be precise!

On average, these top bosses, whose basic pay increased by 20% since 2010, now earn 183 times more than the average worker, up from 160 times in 2010. And this is even before taking their fat bonuses and other perks into account!

These are the very same bosses who are responsible for the on-going job-slashing and casualisation of labour which undermine the living standards of the working class majority!

But there is logic to this madness: in this profit society, the tiny capitalist minority can only thrive by turning the screw on the rest of us - that is, as long as we allow them to get away with it!

Counting the cost

While bosses' pay goes through the roof, despite repeated official claims to the contrary, workers' wages remain at rock bottom levels.

The fact is, that taking inflation into account, average wages are still 8.9% below their pre-crisis level. It is estimated that just to make up for this de facto wage cut, an immediate £2.55/hr increase across the board would be necessary.

But these figures are only averages. While high earners have done quite well, the fall in real wages has been far more drastic for the low-paid, especially for those who had to swap a permanent job for one of the many forms of casual jobs - or for the dole.

To make matters worse, the government's plans regarding in-work benefits promise to reduce the incomes of the low-paid even further. While Osborne was eventually forced to temporarily withdraw the £4bn tax credit cuts he had planned, the phasing in of the new Universal Credit will have much the same result anyway. Low-income households stand to lose anything between £1,000 and £3,000 a year in benefits, due to the lower in-work allowance.

How these households will manage, is anybody's guess. But for the government there is a simple "solution", as the DWP spelled out last month: "Someone could recoup the loss from the work allowance changes by working three to four additional hours a week". That's assuming that such work can be found, of course - but never mind such "petty details"!

And never mind either, if this means lengthening the working week of those doing hard physical jobs. If they wear themselves out at work, it's not Osborne's problem. Nor is it the problem of the fat cats who get fatter and fatter on our labour, while we slave away to earn less and less.

Regaining the ground lost

Yes, there is something rotten in the kingdom of Capital and something needs to be done about it, urgently! But since the TUC's last national day of action over wages, on 18 0ctober 2014, there has been no attempt by trade union leaders to organise any form of large-scale collective action over wages. As if this was not long overdue!

Instead, we are seeing a repetition of past sell-outs in which workers were invited by union leaders to yield to the bosses' blackmail, by agreeing to wage cuts under the pretext of "saving jobs".

The latest example of this is that of the digger maker JCB where, at the beginning of last month, the GMB union recommended a "deal" whereby they agreed to the equivalent of a 13% pay cut in return for 400 job cuts being "reduced" to 290.

The cynical irony in this is that JCB is a serial offender in such matters. Back in October 2008, the company proposed exactly the same deal to the workforce, and also with the backing of the GMB, under the pretext of "saving" 332 jobs. Except that, just one month later, the JCB bosses came back with another plan involving, this time, 400 job cuts. As to the GMB, its only comment at the time, was to say that it was "disappointed"!

Well, the working class just cannot afford such spinelessness. We will not regain the ground lost over the past 8 years of crisis by yielding to the capitalists' blackmail. That their system is in crisis is beyond question. But it is their system, not ours. There is no reason why we should foot the bill for its chaotic operation - and even less reason why we should help companies to increase their profits or the fat cats to increase their obscene salaries.

Yes, the capitalist class should be brought to account for the damage caused by its crisis - and it should be made to pay for it out of its accumulated profits. This is what we will need to fight for in the coming year, with or without the support of the TUC leaders. And it is a fight that we can win!