{"id":1997,"date":"2014-10-23T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2014-10-23T07:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=1997"},"modified":"2014-10-23T13:18:36","modified_gmt":"2014-10-23T12:18:36","slug":"better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=1997","title":{"rendered":"Better off?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Reading the headlines, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never know that most of the country has taken a repeated economic battering for years on end, as they suffer both soaring food and housing costs and stagnating wages.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Politicians crow about the economic recovery finally being under way, and they trumpet the plunge in unemployment<\/a> numbers.\u00c2\u00a0 But who is this economic recovery really benefitting?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A recent Mirror article <\/a>points to the scandal of twisted numbers the Tories are getting away with, as a new report finds the average employee at Britain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s biggest 350 firms are only slightly better off than they were a year ago.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How much better off? A grand total of 8p a month.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To put this number in perspective, British workers, who toil away for the nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s richest firms which raked in almost \u00c2\u0141400bn in gross profits last year<\/a>, aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even able to buy an ice cream with their extra handful of pence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner denounced the wealth inequality scandal that has seen such different outcomes between employees and top bosses.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWhile the bosses of big corporations continue to line their pockets with extortionate pay rises (21% for \u00e2\u20ac\u0098top directors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122), bonuses, share options and pension pots, in the real world, workers are suffering,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

According to a new report from pay expert Vocalink and the Centre for Business and Economics Research, the average worker employed by FTSE 350 companies earned roughly \u00c2\u01411,534 last month \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a 1.4 per cent increase from the same month last year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But when taking into account inflation and soaring housing costs, real take home pay is up per month by the change you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d find in the cracks of your couch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The report pointed to sectors in which workers are decidedly worse off as well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Service sector workers saw their real pay drop by \u00c2\u01411.43 per month since September 2013. Public sector workers were hit the hardest, seeing a real-term 0.7 per cent drop in wages.\u00c2\u00a0 This translates into being robbed of over \u00c2\u014111 per month in the last year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

David Yates, chief executive of Vocalink confirmed that their findings showed without doubt that, despite the supposed economic recovery, \u00e2\u20ac\u015boverall take-home pay growth is slow, so there haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been any notable gains.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Slow wage growth is compounded by rising living costs and job growth that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mostly been in low-pay sectors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Retail, care and hospitality jobs have expanded tremendously, while the country lost over 300,000 manufacturing jobs since the beginning of the recession, where pay is much better. Over one and a half million workers currently in part-time work yearn to be full-time workers, but have no other choice.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These low-paid workers then must face costs that even middle-income earners can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t cope with \u00e2\u20ac\u201c housing costs have trebled in the past 15 years, food costs have skyrocketed by 44 per cent since 2005 and electricity, gas and water bills have risen by 88 per cent in the last five years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The extent to which Britain has become the land of low pay can be seen in income tax revenues, which represents a quarter of all tax revenues. While Chancellor George Osborne had expected \u00c2\u014111bn more to come from income taxes this year, economists predict the Treasury won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see even a quarter of this amount.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is largely due to businesses redolent with profits choosing to keep wages as low as they can get away with legally.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Turner argued radical action is required to combat wage stagnation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWealth inequality in Britain is obscene and can only be addressed by a fair system of taxation and the promotion of strong trade unions, the regulation for sector level collective bargaining to end the race to the bottom on pay and conditions, and the introduction of measures to bring effective and transparent industrial democracy to the boardroom,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading the headlines, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never know that most of the country has taken a repeated economic battering for years on end, as they suffer both soaring food and housing costs and stagnating wages.   Politicians crow about the economic recovery finally being under way, and they trumpet the plunge in unemployment numbers.\u00c2\u00a0 But who is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[96],"wps_subtitle":"Typical workers from top firms just 8p better off per month than a year ago","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1997"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1999,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions\/1999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}