Royal Mail Workers Pay Rises, Bonuses, Less Hours

[Chrysalis]

What killed of strikes in private firms is the now common to employ staff from agencies on temp contracts.

Whilst strike rates may be down in the private sector and this is supposedbly a good thing, to me its an indication the modern private workplace is too imbalanced in favour of the employer.

The vast majority of jobs created now days are temporary and part time jobs, so if you strike whilst you a temp you can be sent packing with ease.

It is a balance that can never be perfect, either we have the modern corp era where workers rights and job security is minimal and as ignition said if you work in the private sector now days, redundancy is probably something to expect at some point in time. Or we have a job envirionment where the unions are too powerful aka the 70's. What thatcher didnt do was not great she just swung the balance the other way. Both sides of the coin have their downsides.

Now here is my own perspective on how things have panned out since 1997. From 1997 to when the recession started about 2007-2008 time most people were getting annual wage increases but they were typically below 'real' inflation. So in a boom wages were dropping behind and individual wealth was shrinking. What is happening now is I feel people still feel they playing catchup with living costs (especially house costs) and need higher wages to do that. If wage increases were more generous during the boom we may not have been in this situation as people would have had more savings and less debt when the recession started. The sad situation is the boom was fuelled by credit so come the recession people dont have the savings and instead have a load of credit that is putting them under pressure to increase earnings. Of course the business's in a recession will only be looking to shrink manpower costs so hence the layoffs and wage freezes.

With the public sector been taxpayer funded, the rules are different of course, eg. the nhs has no immediate danger of going bust. In a way its private vs public, private workers just want to pay less tax, in a era of greed that started since thatcher. Dropping public sector pay can help achieve that for them 'maybe'.

This day was coming tho, I still remember when brown announced the first big NHS budget increase and then finding out a big chunk of it went on pay increases for nurses, and then visiting a hospital soon after to see a shortage of doctors but plenty of nurses standing around idle chatting.