Tag Archives: Pay & Earnings

PRIME is supporting a new programme to develop and communicate universal basic services (UBS) as a route to wellbeing for all, greater equality, full and decently-paid employment, and ecologically sustainable economic activity.  UBS is a framework for policy and practice that fosters collective responsibility, exercised through public institutions, to meet needs we all share.  It recognises that income has two dimensions: one is money and the other is ‘social income’, derived from in-kind...

“I say that if captains of industry cannot organise their concerns so as to give Labour a living wage, then they should resign from their captaincy of industry” - Ernest Bevin, February 1920One hundred years ago this month, a public inquiry held at the Royal Courts of Justice in London marked a significant change in industrial relations and...

 The AssertionEven before Corbyn launched the Labour Manifesto, the Institute of Fiscal Studies launched its critique of Labour tax policies, asserting that Labour’s proposed tax increases were not limited to the richest,:"The truth is of course that in the end corporation tax is paid by workers, customers or shareholders so would affect many in the population".  On the BBC Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell politely rejected the IFS critique, which in essence asserts that the...

Complements or substitutes?Over the summer in OurEconomy my PEF colleague Guy Standing argued that proposals for Universal Public Services (UBS) are not substitutes for the Universal Basic Income (UBI) that he has advocated so cogently.  I strongly agree.  The two are overwhelmingly complementary.  As we approach a UK general election on 12 December and the parties prepare their manifestos, revisiting the UBS and UBI becomes quite relevant. Review of two public policy...

The Taylor “Review of Modern Working Practices”, published on Tuesday, is a fundamentally complacent document:“National labour markets have strengths and weaknesses and involve trade-offs between different goals but the British way is rightly seen internationally as largely successful.”True, the report expresses a number of reasonable aspirations and contains a number of sensible but gentle proposals, but it fails to come up with any strong proposals for dealing with the real...

The simple answer is yes, Britain can afford a significant pay rise for all five million public sector workers. This would be no more than a modest,  inflation-proofing rise - and yet the Conservative Prime Minister roundly rejected the call, and instead laughably raised the spectre of a Greek-style economic collapse! The...