What ‘very very rapid increase in pay’ are we talking about here, exactly?

This one.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mJmwQtPmusk/SlRZKDjHPQI/AAAAAAAAD6U/ZFwfQWQSWNA/s1600-h/Public-private-sector-pay.jpg

@1, damn your pesky troublesome facts. It’s essential from a far-left-narrative point of view to believe that nobody apart from City fat-cats benefited from the economic boom, despite the fact that that’s obviously ridiculous lies.

Where do you guys live? I only ask because it must be nice to live somewhere with zero inflation, no cost of living increases and entirely static house prices for the last decade.

If I were to hazard a guess, I would say you live safely tucked into your grouchy, right-wing bunker, where “common sense” and conspiracy theories matter more than facts.

Well, Dave, cjcjc’s familar, and in no-way-frequently-debunked graph clearly shows the rapidest rise in public sector pay taking place under a Tory government, so you should be ok.

Also, the only government able to take the average pay of *everyone in the entire private sector, no matter what they do, and hence an essentially meaningless figure* above the *essentially meaningless generalisation of average pay for everyone in the public sector, which is disproportionately composed of people with professional qualifications like doctors, and which has an overall higher proportion of people with higher qualification levels than the private sector* was Labour.

So what cjcjc is telling us is: if you are concerned about an ostensibly meaningful (if you are not terribly well informed), but actually pointless but politically cynical comparison of two particular meaningless figures, vote Labour.

Goodness, that’s told me…or something.

In fact I wasn’t making a private/public point – though you might want to consider the value of public sector pensions of course – but rather that real wages across the board have indeed risen since 1997 – by 15% in fact after RPI inflation is removed.

http://www.measuringworth.com/growth/ is a rather interesting site for long term data.

Perhaps that doesn’t count as “rapid” but it’s a decent enough number.

we need a graph of real wages over time, for some sub-set of the population like say the lowest 3 quartiles of workers.

page 12 of this pdf shows a break down by industry, 1995 to 2005, so you can convince yourself real wage growth hasn’t just been among bankers etc. but a breakdown by income band would be better …

I won’t hit submit again, just in case I get what John got, but Sunny I got an error message just then too.

Usually after a general election interest rates go up. Obviously the same will happen and will be said to need to happen to curb inflation. I predict we shall get both inflation and higher interest rates (well they could not get lower).

The result will naturally be a pressure on pay increases. Those who have more than feathered their nests the last decade or so will be the first to squeal about the effects of “inflationary settlements”. Quite a lot of people will be pointing fingers, I think, but I still expect unions to remain relatively weak.

Purely taking cjcjc’s graph as a yardstick, you can easily see that since 1999 the minimum wage hasn’t grown as fast as the rest. Which already tells you a simple truth.

Also…cjcjc’s graph should be seen against the humongous rise of utility bills (gas, electricity above all), council tax, bus fares and train fares in the same period since the 90s.

This may explain why cjcjc’s graph (in any case distorted by massive rises at the top levels) looks so surprising.

In Birmingham alone, bus fares doubled, that is DOUBLED, in the period 2000-2009. Utility bills and council tax, on average, up each year (with the exception of the last one) between 10 and 15% My wage and that of my direct colleagues went up 2% per year.

Until the rubbish is piling up in Leicester Square and there is verifiable television news footage of unburied dead in your local mortuary, don’t believe the hype.

Perhaps I’m the only one thinking “we have fewer strikes now? yippee.”

The error message shouldn’t appear again – sorry about that,

@11 – no you’re not!

@11 It’d be lovely if there were no need for strikes but, as long as profitable companies make people redundant, millionaire chairmen pay their staff minimum wage and a company’s commitment to its shareholders overrides its commitment to its employees there will, alas, be the need for action.

Great. My first comment here and I’m stating the obvious.

Could try harder.

Hey ho,

11 – I ama lso pleased that our economy isn’t being wrecked by strikes. It isn’t just the wealthy who suffer when productivity and economic growth are undermined. In fact it’s the wealthy who are in the best position to survive such disruption.

as long as profitable companies make people redundant, millionaire chairmen pay their staff minimum wage and a company’s commitment to its shareholders overrides its commitment to its employees there will, alas, be the need for action.

Sorry to, y’know, disagree with received wisdom around here, but I disagree. There are reasons for industrial action, but you seem to have listed three rather weak ones.

Sorry to, y’know, disagree with received wisdom around here, but I disagree. There are reasons for industrial action, but you seem to have listed three rather weak ones.

What do you consider to be good reasons? Most that I can think of come back, somewhere down the line, to that lot, be they terms and conditions, redundancies, health and safety issues, relocations, pensions or good old pay disputes.

@Richard

I agree too. Much better to have the economy wrecked by a banking crisis and asset bubble….

Just a quick note too. Between 1980 and 1999 the Developed World’s GDP per capita grew on average 2.2% a year, however every year between 1960 and 1980 GDP per capita grew by an average 3.2%…

Damn unions, helping instigate a post-war miracle!

Kentron re: comment 11,

I remember, in December 1978, walking through Leicester Square (rather I should say around Leicester Square as it was completely full of rubbish) on my way to see The Clash at The Lyceum.

I was 15, loved their music but couldn’t work out why the sung such bollocks about class strugle, rich man-poor man etc and prattled on about worker’s rights. The tunes were great but it was embarrassing and was completely divorced from what I had just seen.

I bet there’s a Clash album lurking in the attic of many of the contributors to this board.

The prospect of strikes doesn’t exactly fill me with joy.

(BTW: the child’s fare on the 113 bus back home was only 5 pence)

19. Left Outside. Big difference between unions in Germany and the UK. Red Robbo was a gift to the Japanese and German car industries. Strikes prevented goods being delivered on time and to the required quality. One example of poor quality control was a friends’ father who bought a jaguar in the USA in the 1970s found the car had faulty electric windows- not exactly difficult to check.

If Rover and Jaguar could have improved quality( none of those Monday or Friday cars) they could have withstood the challenge from BMW and Audi. Until the mid 70s, BMW were a very poor cousin to Mercedes and then they started to imptove just as BL fell apart. When the managers of large car fleets said they wanted cars which could last for 100,000 miles/3 years with no major repairs and still have some capital value, the Japanese delivered.

When did British unions ever improve the technical capability and manufacturing quality of this country?

Isn’t industrial action predominantly a symptom of injustice?

I’m struggling to see how that applies to the Tube strikes for example

“When did British unions ever improve the technical capability and manufacturing quality of this country?”

Isn’t that the managements responsibility? Christ the standard of debate on this thread is low.

What do you consider to be good reasons? Most that I can think of come back, somewhere down the line, to that lot, be they terms and conditions, redundancies, health and safety issues, relocations, pensions or good old pay disputes.

Well, let’s examine the three examples you have.

1) profitable companies make people redundant – How are you defining profitable? Economics and accounting have rather different definitions of the term. Even if you were using the more useful economic definition, why should a profitable company be banned from making people redundant? As times change, some posts simply become.. well, redundant, due to changing market conditions, increased reliance on capital, etc. I don’t see why a company has to wait for an accounting loss before it’s ‘allowed’ to make people redundant.

2) millionaire chairmen pay their staff minimum wage – This is a particularly strange one. While I support an increase in the minimum wage, I wouldn’t support a strike merely on the basis that a workforce were receiving the current level. Furthermore, of what relevance is the income of the chairman? I would think you’re actually interested in the income of the CEO, but either way, I’m not following this one. Should we simply go on strike because our bosses make more than we do? If someone should go on strike because their boss is a millionaire, perhaps Microsoft or Berkshire Hathaway employees should go on.. super-strike, because their chairmen are a multi-billionaires.

3) a company’s commitment to its shareholders overrides its commitment to its employees – I’m sorry to break it to you, but that’s how capitalism works. If you own capital (for example, through a share issue), the company has an obligation to work towards your interests. You might prefer an alternative economic system, but starting a pro-syndicalism party would seem a better way forward than simply encouraging strikes.

As I mentioned earlier, there are circumstances when I would, and have, supported strike action. However, your reasons are so nebulous as to legitimise essentially any strike, which seems to entirely devalue the legitimate industrial problems which exist.

Well, let’s examine the three examples you have.

1) These are peoples’ lives and livelihoods we’re talking about. If a company is profitable it shouldn’t be laying people off, unless failure to do so would lead to more people being laid off. It’s a morality thing.

2) Isn’t the capitalist model meant to lead to wealth trickling down? Why shouldn’t the people at the bottom be paid a decent wage for the work they do?

3) I’m sorry to break it to you, but that’s how capitalism works. Indeed.

These things, I believe, are the causes of industrial action. It would be silly to take action because capitalism doesn’t reward the worker but it’s not so silly to go take action to help keep a profitable business open, increase redundancy payments or fight changes in terms and conditions.

“Perhaps the watershed was more apparent than real; what in retrospect more than anything else marked the transition from a kinder, gentler and all round more decent Britain than the one we have lived in for the last 30 years was Denis Healey’s forced turn to monetarism after the International Monetary Fund loan of 1977. Everything else rather flows from that.”

The history of the last thirty years then, was dominated by the debt crisis caused by the last Labour government.

What do you expect to dominate the history of the next thirty years?

According to the Guardians Friday edition, it is hoped that the government might be able, with the aid of massive spending cuts and tax rises, and the assumption the the economy will start to grow at a reasonable pace next year, to almost balance the budget by 2018.

That is before we even start to pay the debt back. Not to mention the future costs of the state pension as the country ages. Or the unfunded Defined Benefit pension schemes of public sector workers.

#1 cjcc

Care to repeat that analysis with public sector-funded jobs (all of the contracted out staff) versus the private sector to give a real comparison? The figures you present are meaningless in comparing pay in the public and the private sector.

It’ll tell a radically different story.

And even taking your flawed graph as being correct, those public sector “fat cats” have greedily got pay rises equal to pay rises in the private sector.

Their pay should quite obviously be cut by 75%. Maybe they should even work for free? Or pay the Government for the privilege of being employed in the public sector?

“When did British unions ever improve the technical capability and manufacturing quality of this country?”

I have to agree with 24, it is the managements responsibility.

Of course – there wasn’t any under-investment in BL – nor any of the other British manufacturers. They were positively awash with cash to develop newer cars and innovations – those damn pesky Japanese just came in and took those jobs over because everything they produced was just too cheap not to buy!!!! /sarc

Of course, we have to forget all the management stabbing each other in the back and so on and so on – but it was the unions who killed the company – nothing at all to do with shit management.

1) You’ve neglected to answer my question of how you’re defining “profitable”. Who decides when the company is profitable? The accountant, the economist, or the local union leader? If you’re using the accounting definition of “profit”, what time period do you use? A month, a year or a decade? Should you include forecasts of the future or just stick to historical data? Without answers to such questions (and many more of their kind), “a profitable company shouldn’t make people redundant” means little.

2) Again, how are you defining a “decent wage”? I thought we created the minimum wage to ensure no-one was paid an unreasonably low amount. Currently, the national minimum wage for adults is £5.73, which I would guess you believe isn’t a “decent wage”. We seem to agree that the minimum wage should be higher, but not on what actions are acceptable in the mean time.

I think that there are different strategic views of the purpose of industrial strikes. For the article writer, they are to be inevitably applauded, demonstrating the ‘fighting spirit’ of organised labour. For me, they simply indicate the breakdown of relations between owners and labour. Of course, they are occasionally necessary when one side is being unreasonable, but they remain generally undesirable. Therefore, I cannot “welcome” industrial militancy.

Yes, heaven forfend that the workforce might want to improve things itself.

No wonder that Japan took over the auto industry.

You do know how Toyota (a shareholder-owned firm and over time the most profitable automaker in the world) runs its factories, don’t you?

Will, I believe you have proven Osler’s point, too many of us are living in the 1970′s. A debate about BL and the decline of the British car industry! Carry on with this tedious blame game if you must, but things have moved on.

In Germany, for companies of over about 50 staff, it’s the law that a work-force rep is on the board – but somehow the Germans do consensus better, so the work force realise that it’s a competitive world, and strike action is plain damaging to a company – so it rarely happens.

Heard a good 70′s car factory story recently.

Student on summer job – operating a machine to process copper rings. Bored, so experiments with fitting not 1 but 2 rings at a time; then 3 then 10…

Does a whole weeks work in one day.
Gets totally bollocked and nearly loses his summer job… the union rep is the one doing the bollocking.

Actually, now I type it, it’s not funny really; it was part of the death knell of UK car making, I guess.

24. David O’keefe. and 29 Wilf Rhodes.

Cars need to be delivered on time without faults, strikes cause delays and makes assuring quality, difficult. A major problems were Monday and Friday cars. These were poor quality, often due to absenteeism.
Too often pay was based upon number of cars produced , not profitability of company. Producing cars which have to be returned to repair faults or are not sold at all, costs money. To develop Computer Aided Manufacturing and Computer Aided Design and to train the staff to use the new technology, costs money. If companies do not make the profits they cannot afford the investment. Too many strikes were of the demarcation types between different unions. The only union which I knew of which spent money to ensure it’s members stayed up to date with technology was the EETPU. Surely if unions really had their members interests at heart they would have enabled them to keep up to date with technology.

Barbara Castle tried to pass ” In place of strife ” which included a need for compulsory ballots before strikes. Perhaps if this legislation had been passed, the number of strikes been reduced the Tories would have never won in 1979?

@ 32

Will, I believe you have proven Osler’s point, too many of us are living in the 1970’s. A debate about BL and the decline of the British car industry! Carry on with this tedious blame game if you must, but things have moved on.

David – what I have learnt in the many years that I have resided on this planet is two things.

1) History should always be looked at and debated.

2) History will repeat itself if you don’t learn by and from it.

And look where we are today – if we have moved on, as you say – why are we now in a recession that is the worst in 60/70/80 years?

From reading the various sites I do read I get a distinct feeling that there may be trouble at mill. How that will erupt I have no way of knowing. But, as I was told many, many moons ago – you can only turn the pressure up for so long, and then the whole pot will explode.

[35] spot on Will – I remember Thatch vs Scargill as though it were yesterday.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/3537463.stm
Don’t forget Thatch had a score to settle after the miners took down the Tories 10 years earlier.

Then there was Robbie Fowler’s Calvin Klein T-shirt display in support of the Liverpool dockers (for which he was fined by Eufa).
http://www.whoateallthepies.tv/2009/06/top_10_football_6.html

All we need are a few thousand cops (on over time) linking arms and it will be just like the good old days?

Cameron would be fool not to understand this history.

Apologies if this is heading off on a tangent, but I’ve got a wee question.

You see, many times on this blog “The British working class” get mentioned.

As a singular entity, a homogeneous mass, if you will.

Dredging the dim recesses of my memories of economic history, sociology, et al, from uni, this ‘monolithic bloc’ approach surely only came in after Uncle Karl and friends? Before that, the (far more useful analytically) phrase “the working classes” was used.

Now, I understand that some folk may regard that as “divide & rule” tactics, but seriously – who *are* “the working class” these days? Who claim membership through self-identification? Do “skilled artisans” regard themselves as being in any way different from “unskilled labourers”, etc,etc?

Sorry, but I find the expression “the working class” a gross simplification.
Maybe it’s just me. Ho hum.

Back on-topic – as for “welcoming industrial militancy”, that’s a gross simplification and aggregation of a very diverse set of circumstances and issues, too.

I’ll gladly argue the only positive changes that (bigoted, acid-blooded, bile-monger) Mrs. Thatcher achieved were done for entirely the wrong reasons, and carried-out in the most destructive, callous (even vindictive) manner possible, BUT…

At the very least, pre-strike ballots are a sensible thing, especially if you’re seeking ‘public sympathy’ for your cause.
So-called “wildcat” strikes and walk-outs don’t do anyone involved any favours.

And as for ‘getting your hopes up’ for another potential “winter of discontent”?
I’m sorry, but to this single parent on £13k p.a. (gross),you’d have to be a dogmatic socialist-utopian fantasist to reckon that’s a clever idea.

Or someone who mistook “Citizen Smith” for a documentary.

Will, If you want to know why we had the credit crunch, its because they don’t teach financial history in schools. The great depression was over 70 years ago those that remember it are either old or dead. If you want to know why history repeats itself, look at the education system and the unfortunate fact that with the advance of time certain lessons from certain events get lost in the mist of time.

As for Trade Unionism its at a different place in comparison to the 1970′s, things have moved on, despite the recent return of the wildcat strike.

Hell, Will, if you want to use history as a tool for prediction, who’s to say the far-right won’t benefit?

The history of the last thirty years then, was dominated by the debt crisis caused by the last Labour government.

No, that’s a top quality product of the Right Wing Bullshit Machine. The UK periodically sought help from the IMF throughout the 1950s-1970s, under governments of both hues – the reason it imposed the settlement it did on the Callaghan government had more to do with internal changes in the IMF (ie monetarists, Reaganites and Thatcherites getting more play within the institution) and not much to do with Labour being bad/inept/incapable/etc.

38 – David

We are getting close to agreement. I agree that the education system should be a cross-party agreed system and then left alone for at least, and I mean at least 20 years.

I kinda know why this recession hit – but I must write in a manner that others just think I’m a bit thick, which serve my purpose well.

look at the education system and the unfortunate fact that with the advance of time certain lessons from certain events get lost in the mist of time.

I have – that’s why I made my previous point.

Hell, Will, if you want to use history as a tool for prediction, who’s to say the far-right won’t benefit?

I have used that tool – and it will. And I welcome it – odd that coming from such a person as me who is, in all probability, one of the most left of left people who frequent this blog.

We will never move forward, unless you use history as the tool of prediction, because when the low of the low – those scum that sit at the bottom of society begin to say “Fuck this, I have had enough” and organise themselves.

The far-right is gaining momentum in the ‘elite’ again. And as they are then the left will begin to motivate themselves to counter that. Take a bit-a-time, but will happen.

By all means, David, please feel free to call me the crackpot that so many have in the past, I wear it as a badge of honour. Especially when I wave it in their faces and repeat those ugly words “Told you so”.

The swing to the right – when the majority of people want a swing to the left is interesting, but the people will be electing a right-wing government come next year, odd that.

But even that will serve its purpose when the next recession comes cira late 2012.

Hopefully I’ll still be around to see Cameron’s face while bleating about how it isn’t his fault.

The seeds of the new organisations of labour have been sawn – and it isn’t within the TUC. Recent history will tell you that, all you have to do is look.