Workers blamed for sinking wages by Tory-controlled BBC

140201wages

Congratulations are due to BBC business body Jonty Bloom, who should get an award for the bilge he blathered to justify the fact that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have engineered the longest drop in wages for 50 years.

He blamed employees, saying that they weren’t productive enough.

The Office for National Statistics had reported that real wages have fallen by 2.2 per cent every year since David Cameron took over as Prime Minister in 2010 and, as the Tory’s mass-media mouthpiece, the BBC seem to have tasked Mr Bloom with finding plausible deniability for the Coalition, so that ministers won’t have to take responsibility.

Real wages are worked out by taking the rising cost of living into account while calculating the value of earnings.

The ONS report followed one from the Institute for Fiscal Studies on Thursday, suggesting that a mid-range household’s income between 2013-14 was six per cent below its pre-crisis peak.

Both of these reports were latecomers to this particular party, though. A Labour Party report from August 2013 stated that prices had risen faster than wages in all but one month of Cameron’s premiership – April 2013, when he cut taxes for millionaires and bank bonuses soared. The overall fall in annual real wages was £1,350 at the time that report was written.

The Labour report went on to say that figures from the House of Commons Library forecast that, after inflation, wages will be £1,520 lower in 2015 than in 2010, meaning working people, on average, will have lost £6,660 in real terms during the Coalition Parliament.

You’ll notice the BBC report only provides percentages. Interesting, that.

Over at the BBC, Mr Bloom tried to convince us that “workers have, on average, been working fewer hours during the downturn and that in turn has meant that they are earning less.

“The wage an employer pays… will be based on the productivity of the employee. So if a firm’s output falls, it will respond by reducing either the level of wages or the number of people employed in order to maintain its viability… Many firms seem to have held on to staff but output per hour worked fell, putting downward pressure on wages.”

He also suggested that a shift from higher-paid manufacturing jobs to lower-paid service jobs had contributed.

Sadly for Mr Bloom, we can punch holes through all of his arguments. Firstly, this is the government that insisted private sector jobs growth would outweigh the loss of public sector jobs it was going to inflict on the country. That claim alone suggests that ministers may have pressurised firms to keep employees in-post.

But the downturn meant there was less demand for firms’ products. How could they remain viable? Answer: Cut the hours worked by employees. Could this be the reason part-time and zero-hours contracts have exploded during the course of this Parliament? Part-time workers have fewer holiday entitlements and do not cost employers as much in National Insurance. Zero-hours workers are only called when they are needed and therefore the firm’s overheads are hugely reduced. Bosses benefit while workers go without.

Could this also be why firms have hired outside contractors on a self-employed basis, paying them a set amount per job, no matter how long it takes, in order to bypass the minimum wage law? Contractors earn less than the minimum wage but work far longer hours (without upsetting Mr Bloom’s average).

The productivity of a worker depends on how long they are working; part-time or zero-hours employees work for less time and therefore their productivity cannot be anything but lower than a full-time worker. Self-employed contractors’ pay is fixed in companies’ favour from the start. Mr Bloom’s argument is based on a wages fiddle.

Oh, and that shift from manufacturing to the service industries? Isn’t that something the Conservative-led Coalition has vowed vehemently to reverse, while doing spectacularly little about it? I think it is.

One personal note: My own experience as an employee suggests that firms’ financial woes have far more to do with the idiotic decisions made by executives than with the output of employees. Changes in the market do not lead to inventive and innovative responses; instead, the workers are penalised with lower wages or unemployment. This puts firms in a slow death spiral as continual erosion of the workforce makes managers increasingly less able to cope with the challenges that, unaddressed, rack up against them.

So congratulations, Jonty. You carry on blaming the workers if you want. It won’t make a scrap of difference because the real problems lie with the decisions made by company execs, responding to stupid Tory policies.

What a shame you can’t say anything about that because your employers are so utterly under the Tory thumb.

Vox Political works to ensure YOU read the facts.
But this cannot be done without funds.
That’s why Vox Political needs YOUR help to continue.
You can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Alternatively, you can buy the first Vox Political book,
Strong Words and Hard Times
in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

latest video

news via inbox

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

14 Comments

  1. pippakin February 1, 2014 at 1:57 pm - Reply

    Reblogged this on Political Pip Spit or Swallow its up to You and commented:
    Entire industries have been exported to cheap labour and poor, non existent, industrial regulations. In these countries labour is cheap and life is cheaper, meanwhile here while the rich get a hell of a lot richer the jobs continue to disappear and wages fall. Its a buyers market and employers are the buyers.

  2. Joseph Smith February 1, 2014 at 2:12 pm - Reply

    I’m probably one of many tens of thousands, who’ve believed not a single word this governments uttered since we found out Cameron and the coalition puppets lied and reneged about every single pre-election promise made in 2010. The fact is that they are, in the main wholly and totally incompetant. We know that they know just how incompetant they are and that they lack the basic honesty and integrity to go, instead they cling on to position and rank with little or no regard to the damage they cause in the wholly mistaken belief they are right, this is blind wilfull arrogance born of a stupidity which is breathtaking in its audacity and wholesale disregard for humanity, this is Fascism and has no place in our society. We have to get rid of these arrogant ignorant pink cheeked boys who defrauded their way in to power.

  3. beastrabban February 1, 2014 at 2:39 pm - Reply

    Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog.

  4. Shaqui February 1, 2014 at 3:07 pm - Reply

    You know what saps my productivity, and I wonder how many others agree? I’ve not had a pay rise in 6 years but I would even take a pay cut to keep my job, if I thought my boss respected me, the creative decisions I make (I am a graphic designer), and trying to understand and use the equipment I use to get the best results (I work in a high street print shop, and also have to do 99% of the printing). Instead, I constantly get knocked when, being human, I make mistakes, and these are highlighted over and above the good job I do for 99% of the time. I am made to feel small in front of others, and others are also belittled in front of me. I am told that there are laws which should prevent this but would going to arbitration make things any better? No, I would probably lose my job, and I have bills to pay and a mortgage. I try to be as productive as possible, more so in doing deliveries which are between work and home, but precious little thanks are given. If the British worker is lacking in productivity, how much support is there from the ranks above to respect the workforce and not only make them feel they are doing a good job, but tell them? Isn’t a carrot better than a stick?

  5. argotina1 February 1, 2014 at 3:48 pm - Reply

    Anyone who has opinions on the BBC coverage of events should fill in their current consultation. Its the BBC trustees 5 year consultation.
    “It will help us to get the views of licence fee payers on BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three and BBC Four. What do you think are the strength of the channels and what should the BBC do to make these television services better?”

    https://consultations.external.bbc.co.uk/bbc/bbc_one_two_three_four/consultation

  6. jaypot2012 February 1, 2014 at 6:13 pm - Reply

    I believe Jonty just as much as I believe any person in this un-elected coalition, plus the people who voted them in. Which is “F” all.

  7. jaypot2012 February 1, 2014 at 6:14 pm - Reply

    Reblogged this on Jay's Journal and commented:
    I believe Jonty just as much as I believe any person in this un-elected coalition, plus the people who voted them in. Which is “F” all.

  8. Barry Davies February 1, 2014 at 7:03 pm - Reply

    The BBC is the governments propaganda machine they don’t report anything that would make the government look bad and don’t even bother to get facts right. The government decided to crucify Stafford Hospital because a poorly performing hospital up the road is a pfi hospital and it is costing a fortune to pay back the money at a huge interest rate, and the BBC has meekly repeated their lies.

  9. Editor February 1, 2014 at 8:25 pm - Reply

    Reblogged this on kickingthecat.

  10. Sandra Williams February 2, 2014 at 12:20 pm - Reply

    He claims workers are “not productive enough,” yet HE has the most unproductive, incompetent, scrounging, costly, useless bunch of colleagues in the world.

  11. John February 2, 2014 at 1:33 pm - Reply

    “Congratulations are due to BBC”

    That tells me enough about this blog

    • Mike Sivier February 2, 2014 at 1:51 pm - Reply

      Oh dear. I think John’s got the wrong end of the stick. Somebody should warn him about the dangers of jumping to conclusions.

  12. […] Congratulations are due to BBC business body Jonty Bloom, who should get an award for the bilge he blathered to justify the fact that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have engineered the longest drop in wages for 50 years.  […]

Leave A Comment