Latest news with #Austerity
Daily Mirror
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
He was a bin man for 23 years, then his son died and his pay was cut by £500 a month
In October last year, Adrian Hyde's son tragically passed away from sepsis. Five weeks later, in a haze of grief, Adrian opened a letter from his employer, Birmingham City Council. The letter explained he was being 'downgraded' at work – a £6,000 pay cut. "I've worked for Birmingham City Council for 23 years," Adrian, 46, says. "First as a street cleaner for nine years, and the last 14 years as a bin man. I had just lost my son five weeks earlier. To be honest, my mind was not on my job or money, it was looking after my wife and two daughters." But thanks to the pay cut he now faces, just months after losing his 27-year-old son, Adrian now fears losing his home of 18 years too. "I am now £500 a month worse off – and that is really going to hit me," he says. "It could put me and my family out on the street. How can you just wake up one morning and lose £500 a month?" Since the Birmingham bin dispute began in January, the smell of rat-infested rubbish has spread across a city sweltering in a heatwave – along with a toxic war of words. Birmingham City Council – the biggest local authority in Europe – declared itself bankrupt in 2023, after years suffering under the unprecedented cuts handed to councils by George Osborne 's Austerity plan, and council mismanagement including a £1 billion equal pay claim. An all-out strike action by bin collectors began on 11 March in Birmingham, after Unite members claimed workers would face losing up to £8,000 a year due to the council's decision to remove Waste Recycling and Collection Officer (WRCO) roles. Last week negotiations broke down after the Labour council – led by controversial John Cotton – said it was walking away from talks at conciliation service ACAS, with some bin drivers now at risk of compulsory redundancy. Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said that the council's proposals amount to using "fire and rehire". The union says the bin workers are striking over pay cuts of up to £8,000 – which in some cases is up a quarter of someone's wages. Officials say that despite claiming to have negotiated in "good faith", Birmingham City Council were only at the negotiating table twice during eight weeks of talks. Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has since been dragged into a row where ordinary Birmingham families just want their bins collected and workers just want to be paid fairly. In an ordinary week, the city's waste teams would make more than half a million collections using 200 vehicles. For Adrian, Birmingham City Council's timing could have not been worse. He says he was given the choice of taking voluntary redundancy, moving to street cleaning or being downgraded in his current job – at a time when his mental health was under terrible stress. "I broke down in tears with my gaffer saying I couldn't make a decision," he says. "I was being forced to make a decision after losing my child. I couldn't even think straight – my mind was not in any fit state. They said I had until Monday to make a decision about work. "It's been a really hard 10 months. You have to play it day by day, some days are worse than others. No parent should have to bury their child – and my daughters were very close with their brother. I took two weeks compassionate leave, followed by three weeks off-sick. I actually could have taken six months off – but I did the right thing and came back to work. I wanted to do the right thing." Adrian has already taken on a second job in a pub, but he says it's not still not enough – especially as he says the £6,000 he has lost comes on top of a previous pay reduction. "The year before I had £1,500 taken off me from my night allowance, which we got for the early starts, so in theory I've lost £7,500 in the last two years, so £600 a month. Who can afford to replace that?" Cllr John Cotton, leader of the city council, said the council has "reached the absolute limit" of what it can offer the bin workers. He added: "We have negotiated in good faith but unfortunately Unite has rejected all offers so we must now press ahead to both address our equal pay risk and make much needed improvements to the waste service. This is a service that has not been good enough for a long time and we must improve it. "Unite's demands would leave us with another equal pay bill of hundreds of millions of pounds, which is totally unacceptable, and would jeopardise the considerable progress we have made in our financial recovery. Successive administrations have failed to close off the council's equal pay liabilities, costing the people of Birmingham hundreds of millions of pounds and that must end now." A spokesperson added: "All Birmingham City Council employees who may be facing personal difficulties, including bereavement, are encouraged to seek the support that is available to them through our HR team. We are committed to offering support wherever we can and we encourage staff to reach out if they are struggling emotionally." As well as sharing his story with the Mirror, Adrian has shared his story in an emotional video for Unite the Union, which represents the Birmingham bin workers. "We are grateful to Adrian for bravely sharing his story with us," Unite's General Secretary Sharon Graham says. "It lays bare the reality of the proposed cuts – put simply, members like Adrian and their families cannot afford these huge losses to their monthly incomes. "Our powerful video is a stark reminder that any of us could fall under the breadline if our employer decided to cut our wages without any negotiations. No worker should have to go through what Adrian and his colleagues are currently experiencing. We hope this film will make Birmingham Council sit up and listen to Unite. Putting families on the street would be a direct result of their hugely unfair and wrong cuts." The striking workers have an industrial action mandate until December – meaning strikes could go on until Christmas if Birmingham City Council doesn't return to the negotiating table. Meanwhile, for Adrian, this is now a battle not just for bin workers but for council employees across Britain. "The last thing we wanted to do was go on strike," he says. "But we have to defend our rights. We're not asking for more money, we're asking to be kept on the same. "And we are not just defending our jobs now, we're defending everyone's now at Birmingham City Council. We think they'll downgrade every single job at the council. Some teachers have apparently received letters suggesting they may be downgraded too. Every single council across England is watching what Birmingham is doing – if one council does it, the rest will follow suit. So, we're fighting for everyone's job."
Arab News
05-07-2025
- Business
- Arab News
UK Labour's first year in power
This time last year Britain's Labour Party was celebrating one of the most memorable general election victories, a win that swept new Prime Minister Keir Starmer into 10 Downing Street with a decisive working majority of 172 seats. Admittedly, it was as much the unpopularity of the Conservative Party — after 14 years of austerity, division, and sheer incompetence — as it was the hope that Labour would usher in a new dawn for British politics and society that contributed to Labour's stunning success. Starmer and his government should have assumed power with a spring in their step, with confidence, and an inner belief befitting a party that had just received a mandate from the British people for a radical change of direction. Instead, the approach has been one of trepidation, risk aversion, and more focusing on the difficult legacy left by the previous government in order to justify a lack of any overarching vision or plan to achieve it. There is much truth in the claim that the Conservatives left the UK in a sorry state, but this does not exonerate the current government and its leader from a slow, stuttering, and uninspiring first year. A year on, it has become apparent that there are no quick fixes for the ills of Britain's economy and society, and that this is a government that is more comfortable with incremental change and continuity — when, in fact, there has been a need for some far-reaching changes to instill hope, a sense that a departure from the past is possible, and that 'we are all in it together.' There have been flickers of all that, but in a most disjointed manner, and Starmer has shown more leadership on the international stage than on the domestic one. Symbolically, on the week of its first anniversary, the government whips had to contain a rebellion by dozens of backbenchers and others in the party who opposed planned benefit cuts, and only some significant last-minute concessions saved it from losing a vote in the House of Commons. There are mitigating circumstances for the government's inability to set a reformist social-democratic agenda, among them an extremely costly Brexit; the Conservatives' neglect of public services, their general listless approach to social equality, opportunities for all and social justice in general; and even the necessity to divert resources to defense as a result of the immediate need to support Ukraine in its war with Russia. Nevertheless, a year into this government, British people do not see or feel that enough has improved on the issues that really matter to them, from reviving the National Health Service to progress on economic growth, education, infrastructure, and affordable housing. To be sure, we should cut Labour some slack. The public coffers were, indeed, rather empty when they came to power, and finding a balance between raising funds, mainly through taxation, while not sending the economy into stagnation is never easy. The UK economy is suffering from decades of structural vulnerabilities, and while there are pockets of economic buoyancy, at the same time there is also weak productivity, low business investment, persistent long-term unemployment, a constant decline in manufacturing, growing social inequalities, and a lack of competition in the utilities market. A year on, there is little evidence that these issues have been dealt with convincingly since Labour returned to power. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has shown more leadership on the international stage than on the domestic one. Yossi Mekelberg At the same time there is hardly any reason for doom and gloom, and unlike many previous administrations, Labour under Starmer is responsive when things go wrong. This may be down to either a genuine attentiveness to concerns raised by the public or dissenting voices within the party, or sheer pragmatism, but in any case the result is a government that is not averse to changing course, or at least to adjusting when it faces resistance. Frequent U-turns project both weakness and bad policy-making processes, and hence should not become habitual, especially if this compromises core principles or throws the government's agenda off course. Yet, there is something refreshing about it as a corrective mechanism. Previous administrations have adhered to policies even when it became obvious to everyone, even themselves, that this was damaging for the party and the country. One could argue that depriving millions of pensioners of winter fuel payments, not agreeing immediately to hold a statutory inquiry into grooming gangs, and most recently cutting benefits for some of those most in need was hardly what you would expect from a Labour government, but the British prime minister deserves some credit for reversing most of those decisions, even if not for political foresight or astuteness. Moreover, making mistakes early in the electoral cycle, especially with the safety net of a huge majority, enables not only a learning from mistakes, but also the opportunity for a mini-opposition to emerge within the ruling party to serve as the government's conscience and compass, as long as it is aimed at keeping the party in touch with its roots and support base. While Starmer is hardly seen as an inspirational leader at home, his record on the world stage is mixed. On Ukraine and on the need to rebuild the UK and European military capabilities to stop the Russian threat, he has been bold and determined to lead from the front. On the issue of a ceasefire in Gaza and recognizing Palestinian statehood, he has been too slow to recognize that giving Israel a blank cheque will only end in further disaster, and he always has one eye on what Washington says. He is still more respected abroad than at home. There is no escape from the fact that voters are already disillusioned with the Labour government, as they express it time and again in opinion polls. With the Conservatives incapable of picking themselves from the canvas after last year's election knockout, the big winner is the populist-nationalist party Reform, which in its opportunism is devoid of any constructive policies, only specializing in exploiting societal malaise, and people's resentments and fears. It is for Starmer to start his second year in power by diving deeper to address the fundamental sources of disquiet in British society and to resurrect the welfare society by enabling hard working people to have a decent life and for young people to see the prospect of enjoying the kind of life that the post-war generations enjoyed. This will require more than just tweaking with the current state of affairs.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
If you're in the private sector, get ready to take a massive hit
It should have been called the Spending More Review. Or even better, the Spending More Without Saying Where the Money is Going to Come From Review. You have to wonder how much longer this Government can go on running against Liz Truss. Or against those other favourite panto villains: Austerity and the £22 Billion Black Hole. And how much more mileage can there be in swearing fealty to the interests of 'working people' when you clearly mean 'people who work in the public sector' – because you are busy putting the other kind, the ones who work in the private entrepreneurial sector, out of business. So it was a billion here and a billion there: lots and lots of money to be spent on what are obviously thought to be the most vote-winning recipients, most of whom happen to reside in the Red Wall constituencies which Labour is terrified of losing to Reform. There was, of course, a large funding increase promised to the NHS without any demand for the kind of reforms that might actually see that money better spent. Even Gordon Brown, who hugely increased health spending, had demanded reform in exchange (although he never actually got it). But to fail even to mention such a condition seems insulting to the intelligence of voters who can see the inefficiencies and waste in the system with their own eyes. But the most depressing recurrent theme was a return to the sentimental pre-1980s idea of a working class that cannot imagine any life beyond its local industrial roots. The aspiration and social mobility which Blair's New Labour had been compelled to embrace is gone now. The commitment was to save 'local communities' of 'working people' by developing government-run projects: precisely the conditions that gave rise to the suffocating trade union power of the 1970s. (Ms Reeves explicitly stated her determination to give 'public service workers the pay rises they deserve.') This was a spending programme that a Government led by Jeremy Corbyn would have been proud of. But the biggest hole in all of this was any explanation of where this money would come from. There was a clear hint in her reiteration of the Government's commitment to pay for increased 'day-to-day' spending through current income rather than by taking on more debt. That means tax rises. But you knew that didn't you? And if your earnings come from the wealth-creating private sector, even though you may consider yourself at least as much of a 'working person' as those who are paid by the state, you had better be prepared to take a very substantial hit. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Russia Today
09-06-2025
- Business
- Russia Today
Thousands rally in London demanding ‘Welfare Not Warfare' (VIDEOS)
Thousands of people marched through central London on Saturday to protest the UK government's deepening militarization at the expense of public welfare. The demonstration, organized by the People's Assembly, began at midday at Portland Place and moved toward Whitehall, with participants chanting and holding placards that read 'Tax the Rich,' 'Nurses Not Nukes,' and 'Welfare Not Warfare.' Trade unionists, campaigners, and activists from across the country rallied under the slogan 'No to Austerity 2.0,' calling on the Labour government to abandon fiscal policies that cut support services while escalating defense spending. 'Scrapping winter fuel payments, keeping the Tory two-child benefit cap, cutting disability support, and slashing foreign aid—while boosting defense spending—are not 'tough choices,' they are political choices,' a spokesperson for the People's Assembly said. Thousands on the streets in London with @pplsassembly against welfare cuts. Welfare not warfare! #welfarenorwarfare# Demonstrators condemned Prime Minister Keir Starmer's 'battle-ready, armor-clad' rhetoric, accusing him of using the language of conflict to silence criticism of his economic agenda. 'His war-mongering talk of war-readiness and a new era of threat are a cynical attempt to deflect any criticisms of his policy of cuts and austerity,' one campaign leaflet read. 'His call for everyone to be part of the defense of the country is an attempt to label anyone who opposes his obscene militarism and austerity as unpatriotic.' 'We will not and never will accept a government that is more interested in arms sales than in looking after the poor in its own country,' Martin Cavanagh, President of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), told the crowd. #WelfareNotWarfare#TaxtheRichPeople's Assembly March today in London Angela Grant, President of the DWP group, said people were 'dying because they do not have food in their bellies,' while military budgets rise and the NHS continues to be underfunded. Labour leader Keir Starmer unveiled the Strategic Defense Review on Monday, committing to increase military spending to 3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The government's plan includes expanded production of warplanes, long-range missiles, and its nuclear-powered submarine fleet. All the crimes in your name,Labour Party Shame Shame!Anti Austerity March London today Defense Secretary John Healey said last week that the UK was 'sending a message to Moscow' by allocating billions of pounds for new munitions factories and long-range strike capabilities. In addition, London has pledged to deliver 100,000 drones to Ukraine by April 2026. A government statement confirmed that £350 million from a wider £4.5 billion Ukraine support package would be used for new drone shipments.
