This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
WORKERS in Britain have missed out on a whopping £4,000 in pay growth since 2007 compared to other countries with comparable economies, TUC analysis has shown.
The union body said that while most high-income nations have delivered significant wage increases despite the impact of the 2008 financial crisis, real pay at home has fallen.
It blamed Britain’s “exceptionally poor” performance on Tory austerity policies and attacks on workers via the widely criticised Trade Union Act 2016.
Out of 33 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, Britain is languishing in 29th place, the TUC highlighted, with an average annual growth rate of 0.2 per cent in the last 15 years.
Only seven nations in the supposedly elite group have recorded negative pay growth, it said.
If Britain had kept pace with the group’s average since 2007, the typical worker’s pay packet would be worth £4,000 more today, but instead it has fallen by £950.
The highest rates of annual real pay growth have been in the Baltic states, but comparable countries in terms of location and industrial development have also performed better, with Germany’s wage growth averaging at 1 per cent.
With inflation hitting a 30-year high, the union body called for Chancellor Rishi Sunak to act in next week’s spring statement.
Collective bargaining must be strengthened when the often-promised employment Bill is finally published, the TUC said, saying decent pay rises for all public-sector workers, including a £10 an hour minimum wage, are long overdue.
A windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas companies’ profits should also be used to fund measures to help families with rising energy costs, such as an immediate boost to universal credit and an increase in the warm homes discount, it suggested.
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Over the last twelve years, Conservative ministers chose to impose austerity, cut public-sector pay and attack workers’ rights to bargain for fair pay.
“And now these years of weak pay growth have left millions of working families badly exposed to soaring prices.
“Britain needs a pay rise. The Chancellor must put higher wages at the heart of his spring statement and ministers must get unions and employers around the table to negotiate binding fair pay agreements to get wages rising.”
