Thread: Pay has been stagnant since the financial crisis, with especially poor growth in the public sector
But plot the real-term wage growth of striking workers on a chart, and it's clear teachers and nurses have had a particularly rough ride...
Ask the public who is right to strike, and their view is clear: NHS workers and teachers have the biggest support. People are more sceptical when it comes to higher-paid roles.
It's still pretty much just a list of whether people think positively of certain professions. Still of value, but it doesn't feel like much of a judgement on the specifics of striking now.
Seems to me that train drivers show unions work and that people get the pay rises they should.
Seems to me that allowing such public monopolies to form, sees their services run primarily for the good of their staff, rather than that of their customers.
Thread: Pay has been stagnant since the financial crisis, with especially poor growth in the public sector
But plot the real-term wage growth of striking workers on a chart, and it's clear teachers and nurses have had a particularly rough ride... ...
It would be really interesting to have that chart adjusted for the change in per capita GDP over the period. Have the rail unions won a greater share of GDP for their members? Or is the poor rate of growth of average wages a result of a lower share of GDP going to employees?
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
I think you underestimate how many people are being paid minimum wage. Making employers pay living wages rather than expecting the Government to subsidise their payroll seems an eminently sensible way to run a country.
You can do more than one thing at once of course.
Oh I agree. I was just referring specifically to the question of a minimum/living wage. Not least because I was surprised to see Carynx's view of it.
Employers who complain they can't afford to pay enough such that the taxpayer has to subsidise their employees pay and therefore are also subsidising those businesses have no sympathy from me.
I don't mind subsidising health, education, infrastructure and the like, but I draw the line at subsidising employers who can't run a successful business without paying their employees poverty wages and relying on me and other taxpayers to bail them out.
There's also the fact that the very point of capitalism is that inefficient and unviable businesses should go under. Nothing pisses me off more than the "socialise the losses, privatise the profits" approach.
George W Bush made many mistakes but he did let Lehmans go bankrupt with no bailout
Mugabe? It's good to see a fresh example of traditional British understatement.
A friend sent me some pistachio nuts for Christmas. I'm not sure how to give them an IQ test, but I'm sure Google will help me, when it comes time for to do that.
In an article for Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Marco Seliger writes that part of Germany’s reluctance to allow other countries send their Leopards to Ukraine can be explained by the interest of the German weapon industry
Germany would also lose influence over neighbors’ security policy….
“Any country that would supply Leopard 2s to Ukraine is being offered U.S. tanks from its own inventory & a long-term industrial partnership as a substitute according to German industrial circles.
That is quite possible - the US has a lot of M1s in storage, regularly being cycled through updates to keep the pork flowing to the factory in an important (politically) district.
If Leopards go to Ukraine and are replaced with M1s, then over time, losses in Ukraine will be replaced with more Leopards. The likely result would indeed be that current Leopard 2 operators would end up with M1 fleets.
This makes no sense if you think about it for 5 seconds. Shows people will believe any old rubbish if they want to.
Just chiming in to say how wonderful it is that the chatbot passed an MBA exam but failed a bunch of others. Maybe we can replace the MBAs with chatbots and save billions.
I've never done an MBA and never been impressed by those that have.
The best way to learn how to run a business is to be mentored directly by successful leaders who have.
Hear hear. Strip out the MBAs and management consultants.
Strictly speaking, that's what I am - but I'm a mega project management consultant.
I do have some technical skills in how to structure them and deliver them. And I work hard on it for each client.
The issue is the ones who go through their careers with just bullshit and playing back to the clients what they've already told them.
The problem is that Management Consultant can mean anything from a General Groves level organisational genius to a graduate in a shiny suit who has failed Remedial Arse Elbow Differentiation. Twice.
Hell, never even got THAT far at my own hilybilly academy!
Though do recall a school assembly, on how to tell the difference between one's ass and a hole in the ground.
I thought this might be an interesting piece from the economist, instead I came away with was really nobody has any real new ideas....
Devolve more power (then using their own figures, show the areas of the UK with the most devolved powers haven't done any better), cherry pick an example of a rough US city who has done well out of hyper focus on educating around one industry (except they miss the fact that the university driving this has been an elite university with eye watering funding since its inception....bit like saying well lots of companies move to Cambridge (or perhaps Bristol is a better example) because of the poly there.....build massive infrastructure projects to upgrade left behind cities , but then admit even Germany can't actually afford to do this fully, they only did it to select number of big cities, not small towns (isn't that what has happened in Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle etc)
Thanks for posting this. The video is a bit wishy-washy but it’s not true that nobody has any ideas.
As the video points out, Germany took on the challenge of “levelling up” East Germany after 1989, and although a disparity remains, East Germany is now richer than much of Britain.
Devolution to date has been minimal. Britain has pretty much the weakest local government in the OECD, and among the lowest levels of regional infrastructure investment.
As a consequence it is perhaps the most regionally unequal country in the Western world, hugely expensive in terms of wasted human capital.
Hope the somewhat dreary weather in this part of the world* is not putting you off your enjoyment of a dram of extra strong turnip juice.
*To explain that, I’m staying with family in Gatehouse of Fleet this weekend. Having a lovely time and just been for a walk in the woods, now admiring the view across Loch Ken which may be restricted but has a certain grandeur.
@ydoethur Thank you Ydoethur, lovely part of the country down there.
Comments
Your comment seems to imply that Johnson accepted a bribe to appoint Sharp. Where would that leave Sharp?
NEW THREAD
A friend sent me some pistachio nuts for Christmas. I'm not sure how to give them an IQ test, but I'm sure Google will help me, when it comes time for to do that.
2023 is going to be a fantastic year for Ukraine!
Though do recall a school assembly, on how to tell the difference between one's ass and a hole in the ground.
As the video points out, Germany took on the challenge of “levelling up” East Germany after 1989, and although a disparity remains, East Germany is now richer than much of Britain.
Devolution to date has been minimal.
Britain has pretty much the weakest local government in the OECD, and among the lowest levels of regional infrastructure investment.
As a consequence it is perhaps the most regionally unequal country in the Western world, hugely expensive in terms of wasted human capital.