“Britain needs a pay rise” was the rallying slogan of an estimated 100,000 strong march in London of working people from different segments of the work force and from all parts of the country.
The colourful and spirited protest against the policies of austerity that according to the trade unions have resulted in the biggest squeeze on incomes since Victorian times, started from Blackfriars embankment and wound its way through central London ending up in Hyde Park. Here, amidst a carnival-like atmosphere of colour and political imagination, leaders of the trade union movement and other public figures addressed the crowds.
“The average worker is £50 a week worse off than in 2007 and five million earn less than the living wage. Meanwhile, top directors now earn 175 times more than the average worker,” Trade Union Conference general secretary Francis O’Grady told the crowds. She posed with other union leaders next to a giant 175 figure.
(Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England in a recent speech called the widening income gap “a tale of two workers,” with wages for the bottom 20 per cent falling by almost 20% since 2007 and back to what it was in 1997. “The upper peak of the labour market is clearly thriving in both employment and wage terms. The mid-tier is languishing in both employment and real wage terms. And for the lower skilled, employment is up at the cost of lower real wages for the group as a whole,” he said.)
Public sector workers, including teachers, nurses, paramedics, midwives, and hospital cleaners marched alongside workers from the shop floor, retail outlets, call centres, cinemas and other occupations in the private sector, demanding an end to austerity and pay rises across the board.
Organised under the banner of the TUC, the demonstration was joined by the major unions, among them Unite, Unison, GMB, the Communication Workers Union, the National Health Service and nurses unions, and the Indian Workers Association, which is one of the earliest organisations of Indian workers in Britain.
“I think it shows how strongly ordinary working people feel,” Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the TUC later told The Hindu. “They have been putting up with real pay cuts year on year since the financial crash in 2008. At the same time they have seen top pays soaring and real boardroom greed. I think people are clearly saying today: ‘We are not going to put up with it any more, we need a new kind of economy that delivers decent jobs but also fair pay for working people.’”
Britain has seen public sector strikes in the last week with NHS nurses and midwives, and even civil servants going on strike. More will take place, Ms O’Grady said.
Len McCluskey, General Secretary of Unite accused the coalition government of “dismantling and destroying” the welfare state and every gain the working people have made since 1945. Billy Hayes, leader of the Communication Workers Union, said Labour should not stop be pursuing “austerity lite” policies. Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, said 600 public sector jobs had been lost every day since the coalition came to power.
