Listen to the news and read the papers MaizieD, why are all these strikes suddenly coming when the labour think they have a chance with Sunak in charge?
The strikes are coming because working people, particularly those in key worker positions are ground down by 12 years of tory austerity, when their wages have been held down so far that they are now only earning in real terms what they were earning 12 years ago. Many are also being asked to accept worse terms and conditions than those they have been working under for years. Royal Mail employees are, additionally, under threat of 'fire and rehire'.
Yes, I hear the news, I read the papers and I also read all sorts of information that comes my way via the internet. I have also studied history and some economics. What all this tells me is that we are living in a country where conditions are fast approaching those of the Victorian age; with attitudes of employers to match.
But this isn't the Victorian age, this is nearly 200 years later in an age when we thought that poverty and inequality were well on the way to being eliminated. Our experience of the last 12 years has been that, far from being eliminated, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened and that we have had a government that is unconcerned about this. A government that has, through its economic policies, actually contributed to it.
The people who are striking, or planning to strike, are key workers or workers in private companies that are supposed to provide public services. The employees are people on whom the services depend, take them away and there is no-one to make the companies' profits. There is no earthly reason why they should not be able to have a share in those profits which recognises their contribution to making them. There is no reason why the company shareholders who, in the main, contribute nothing to the companies should be given an ever increasing share in those profits by way of dividends for doing absolutely nothing except buy some shares.
The distribution of wealth in our economy is like an inverted pyramid (i.e it's standing on its apex. The poorest people make up that apex. Then imagine the wealthy and companies sucking as much money as they can from those who comprise the apex. Because that is what they are doing. They sell their goods and services to the poor for as much as they can in the interests of making profits for themselves and their shareholders. But there comes a time, and it is probably here already, when their customers have little or nothing left to be sucked out of them. Then what happens? Company profits fall, people lose their jobs and the whole economy declines.
Paying decent wages helps to bolster the economy, it keeps companies in business; paying decent wages in the public sector has the same effect.
You seem to think that the striking workers are plotting some giant conspiracy against the public. Well, more and more of them are 'the public'. You should maybe read different newspapers, ones that aren't trying to play one section of the population off against another. There's no conspiracy, just more and more desperate hardworking people who can't make ends meet.
