UK Moving Backwards: Half a Century of Social Progress Reversed in Last Decade

Reblogged from scriptonitedaily:



According to research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, people born in the 1960’s and 70’s will retire poorer than their parents, having earned a lower wage, with no savings, in a home they don’t own, and with a smaller private pension. After unpicking the fabric of the Post War Welfare State that brought unbroken social progress for decades, the UK is reaping the whirlwind.

The Children of the 60’s and 70’s

 

The findings from the Institute for Fiscal Studies conclude that those born in the 60’s and 70’s ‘are facing a triple whammy of meagre pay rises, inadequate pensions and soaring property prices’.  All of which means that they will have less financial security in their old age, than their parents or those born in the decades before them.

There is a very simple reason for that.

Rather than extending the benefits, rights and freedoms won by UK citizens in the post WWII period, subsequent generations sold them away instead.

Union Busting

 

(an example of media vilification of union leaders past)

The rights to unionise, bargain for pay and conditions collectively, and withdraw labour through strike – this cooperative approach to holding corporate power to account brought workers rising wages, reduced hours, the concept of work life balance, the weekend, health and safety in the workplace, and an end to the slave labour conditions working people endured through the 18^th, 19^th and early 20^th century.

Successive governments of Heath, Thatcher, Major, Blair and Cameron have pitched their war against the unions as if the unions were something other than working people – while simultaneously creating conditions for Unions to become bloated, bureaucratic policers of dissent among working people.


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