(16 Oct 2022, 8:38 pm)Adrian wrote You may believe this race to the bottom rubbish, but it's a nonsense. It's funny how when we're told the economy is struggling, it's never the wealthiest people in our society that suffer, but it's always the least-well off or those who are in receipt of in-work benefits who are expected to make up the 'shortfall'
The economy will never grow at the rate any Government would want, unless people have disposable income to spend. It's basic economics. If, and by your expectation, workers were to continue accepting nil pay awards or real-terms pay cuts, then disposable income will continue to fall even further than it is now.
Quite rightly people are fed up of this, especially in the public sector, which has faced almost 14 years of pay restraint now. Referring to them/unionised labour as animals is disgraceful tbh, and has no place on this forum, along with some of the other language used in this thread.
If you're happy earning less than £10ph for a 'world famous' Newcastle company, then that's up to you and your colleagues. Just as others have a right to form a Union, you have the right not to. But don't then try and hold everyone else down with you.
The price of you no longer being fed up, for the next five years at least, is apparently £2.5bn. And that's just bus drivers, not nurses, not teachers, not ambulance drivers.
The only choice you made, evidently, was to join a reality denying cult.
I choose the real world. I choose the world where, for complete context, the much maligned NHS budget is £8bn, the global profit of Amazon is £200m, and the stock market has a complete fit over a government policy expected to raise only £2bn.
You really can't even claim this is a mere opening offer in a good faith negotiation, given the stupendous level of greed it represents, your wild claim it somehow doesn't effect anyone else who pays UK tax or has a mortgage etc, and the fact it was merely a hot minute between the time it was announced inflation was FORECAST to top 10%, and you deciding to strike.
In the real world, inflation is currently 8.6%, mainly due to energy prices, with the Tory price cap and payments clearly set to bring that down again.
Even if you come to your senses and accept a realistic offer, people will remember what you tried to pull here, given the sheer greed of it, and the spectacularly flawed ways you tried to justify it, and so it will no doubt be added to the growing list of reasons quite a few of us has to never join a union ever again.