https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/16/pay-rises-should-be-a-reward-for-productivity-says-rishi-sunak
Prime minister also calls for wage growth to be sustainable to help economy grow
Then why has no one been “rewarded” for huge amounts of productivity increases since the 70s?
Oh. Right. They “rewarded” the CEO greedclass
Ok. How far back should we go? I'm feeling the 1970s and go from there. Oh lokkie here it shows that the poor and middle class have doubled their productivity. Oh wait wages have been effectively slashed? Hmm.
There's a good post on Reddit with video proof from 1977 - https://www.reddit.com/r/Britain/comments/15s3zsw/food_prices_back_in_1977/
The basket showed in the video is £26.17 in today's money. It will cost £22.06 today from the same Tesco. There are more examples in the comments. In short: everything is chaper now and people earn more. It's a fact.
If people spent the same amount of money on housing as they are paying for food, maybe you'd have a point. Even in the link that you've provided, people calculated that housing is about x6.1 median salary today compared to x2.7 in 1977.
I didn't know you could eat your house... Also overall affordability wasn't that much better back then. Again, plenty of examples there.
Ah yes, as any statistician will tell you - 10 items from one shop is more than enough to determine the impact of inflation over 50 years.
It absolutely won't cost £22 quid, that's CPI adjusted of course if you read the comment you're referring to. But yes, in real terms (asking honestly do you know what that means? your comment seems pretty ill informed) food is cheaper. So are some other items like consumer electronics. On the other hand housing and utilities (you know the majority of a household's spending) has advanced well ahead of inflation. Hence "cost of living crisis" which maybe you think is imaginary.
Worse, while average earnings have outpaced inflation the bottom end of the distribution has accrued almost none of that benefit. Massive increases in inequality mean that while for the comparatively well off (and the very well off) things are mostly fine for a sizeable chunk of society life has been getting materially harder.
The post has links with 1977 prices adjusted to purchasing power as well - most things for cheaper. A lot cheaper.
Thanks for clarifying that you have absolutely no idea or interest in learning how inflation is calculated so I can safely ignore you.
Should a real terms pay cut be accompanied by a compensatory drop in productivity? I think it’s called quiet quitting or something…
Quiet Quitting is doing only what was paid for and no more. Thus crap pay results in crap output.
Doing your job and nothing more has been called coasting for decades, but apparently some blogger made a stupid new term that doesn't involve being quiet or quitting and that is what will be used from now on.
It's called working to rule and people have always done it as a protest in workplaces, we didn't need some stupid new tick tock friendly name for it.
Pay raises for productivity is fine, but you also need raises for cost of living increases.
More importantly, as a centralized bank economy, it’s the government’s fault inflation exists and it is their responsibility, as and employer and monitor of inflation, to make their employees while every year. If productivity increases, that should be paid on top of pay maintenance.
The government doesn't have any responsibility for you, it's not there to serve you. It's there to govern you and make sure you stay in line.
I mean analytically the comment is somewhat correct, the government in most of the world doesn't actually, take responsibility for you and doesn't adequately care for it's citizens despite claiming to be from the people for the people. Liberal government doesn't really work for the people, it works for the owning class.
I agree that productivity should be rewarded, but that's not what happens. If you work hard, the company will realise that they can get the same work done with fewer employees and will reduce work hours to increase profits instead of rewarding you.
Pay rises are supposed compensate for the inflation caused by your incompetent government, mate.
We got that system in the US. I just got my review. Boss says I did great, mentions a couple areas I excelled in. Shows me the review. Everything rated straight down the middle. Turns out when it comes to paying me more, I'm just a medium/ok worker.
Well, if it's any consolation, I imagine that there are lots of companies out there who would be more than willing to pay you what you're worth.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Sunak’s comments come after Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey expressed concerns that pay increases were fuelling inflation.
The Bank of England is now under renewed pressure to raise interest rates next month after wages jumped more than expected in June, boosted by a one-off payment to NHS workers.
However, amid recent inflation and rising interest rates, trade unions have taken issue with the apparent blame attached by Bailey and others to wage demands by low and middle earners.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) general secretary, Paul Nowak, said on Tuesday: “Real wages are still worth less today than in 2008 after the longest pay squeeze in 200 years.
An analysis in June by the TUC also found that pay rises for the top 10% of UK earners, including City bosses, had clearly outstripped the rest of the workforce and had been a prime driver of recent inflation and interest rates.
Sunak trumpeted the public sector pay offers that the government had extended to NHS workers, teachers and others and called for an an end to industrial action by doctors.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
In his case, being so incredibly shit and inept, he should be paying billions back then. This duplicitous twat should just fuck off.
Interesting chart. I think it comes from this article on why here
This article is so slimy. Sustainable here really means in relation to the fiduciary responsibility to the board. To use another C-suite term, the sustainable pay rise is often immaterial.
I'm far from an expert on this but I thought that an increase in productivity was the end result of multiple things coming together. Investment, training, a strong economy etc etc??
Do we start measuring productivity today or since the 1950s because one person on a PC or crane at a harbour replaced a crap load of staff in an office or dockyard - that seems Helland productive.
