Response to ONS wages figures
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Responding to Office for National Statistics figures on wages released today, Left Unity’s Salman Shaheen said:
“The news that average wages are finally rising above inflation, after six years of falling real wages for workers, will bring little comfort to the million people reported by the Trussell Trust to have turned to its food banks in the last year.
“It is a scandal that in the 21st century, in one of the richest nations on Earth, hunger is once more an everyday problem for hundreds of thousands of people, even while they are in work.
“The government, which has implemented swingeing cuts to public services and benefits and has frozen wages, is responsible for this situation. Meanwhile Labour offers little in the way of a solution. We urgently need to reverse the government’s cuts and introduce a mandatory living wage.”
Speakers from Left Unity are available for interview. For more information contact press@leftunity.org
Notes to editors
Left Unity is the new party of the left in Britain. Founded in November 2013, it already has over 1,900 members and 50 branches across the country.
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2 responses to “Response to ONS wages figures”
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Comrades
The problem with the “wages” figures as presented by the ONS and the Government is that they include the pay of senior management, various species of finance capital operatives (bank traders, those who work for hedge funds etc.) and other such characters who do not work for wages as such, but instead receive payment including a share of the surplus extracted from the working class.
If these types are stripped out and the statistics are limited to those who sell their labour in exchange for wages then it is a decent bet that actual wages have not by any significant amount if at all and are certainly still falling in real terms compared to the cost of living for workers.
M Jones is bang on! Also using the CPI as a measurement which is around 1.4 or 1.5% when the RPI measurement (which many believe is more accurate) is around 2.5%. Employers starting to offer around 1- 1.5% and think they are doing us a favour!! My pay has been cut by 7% over last 5 years and VAT, gas, electric, water, food, fares etc have all gone up massively. All propaganda from the Coalition who deliberately practice Neo-liberal cheap labour policies for us (but not for the rich).