Local government employers are imposing another year’s pay freeze on local authority workers. They are also saying they can’t afford to give the paltry £250 one-off payment for public sector workers earning below £21,000 promised by the chancellor last June.
Onay Kasab, Unite, Greenwich, told the Socialist, in a personal capacity: “Another year, another pay freeze. Many women council workers will be working three jobs just to earn a half decent wage – VAT and national insurance increases mean that their wages will be worth so much less. Instead of telling these people, who work all hours of the day, to become ‘volunteers’ for the big society, how about paying a decent wage so that they do not spend every waking day working?”
Brian Debus, Hackney Unison and president of Hackney trades council added, also in a personal capacity: “Even Merve -‘the swerve’ – King, governor of the Bank of England, has said real wages will have been in decline for six years in 2011. The last time this happened was in the 1920s!
“The trade unions should use the TUC’s 26 March demonstration as a battering ram to defeat the cuts and break the current log jam over all workers’ wages.”
