Capitalism is our driving force ... but it needs to be fair
WATCHING the rail strikes and the consequential chaos that has ensued has left me feeling conflicted. While I’ve never been a fan of industrial action, I now feel there’s actually a fight to be fought.
Years ago I worked for a newspaper group that needed to shed some staff and suspend pay rises. The National Union of Journalists, at the time, balloted for strike action. I was vehemently against it. My company was struggling, and the last thing it needed was to splurge a huge slice of its losses on more pay for its workforce. I wanted it to survive. My career depended on it.
Caving in to pressure to go on strike would have resulted in a catastrophic loss of revenue at a time when the company that put food on my table was struggling to put food on my table. I voted to take a hit and not plump for a walkout in pursuit of a hefty pay rise.
I’m in an industry which – I won’t beat about the bush – isn’t known for lavish salaries and fat pay rises. The media industry, when I joined it in 2005, was in a state of turmoil. Print circulation was declining, publishers were struggling to get their head around the brave new world of the internet and redundancies and pay-freezes were a regular part of that downward spiral.
The media industry has recovered now, and we’re in the 2020s, which has seen us thrown at the door of an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis. We still don’t get paid enough, but I’m aware I’m not alone in this.
Inflation has rocketed beyond the point at which any company can realistically hope to dish out pay rises that will meet the cost of living that inflation has brought about. These are extraordinary times, and I’m grateful for every penny.
I’m lucky that I now work for a company that has got its business model right and that still manages to turn a profit from print at the same time as mastering an engaging and successful digital output.
But there are companies out there that are making vast profits in what is, for many people, a postpandemic boom. And they are getting the balance all wrong.
Across the country we’re seeing examples of businesses hosing money into the pockets of CEOs and directors, while a carefully measured sip is given to workers.
Something has to change. It’s time every industry wakes up to the fact that, without its front line, without people like me, and all the other staff who put in the daily grind that keeps the mood in the boardroom buoyant, there wouldn’t be a rising graph on the whiteboard. There wouldn’t be a fat bonus at the end of the year.
The issue of the wealth divide has been now stripped down beyond the parameters of the rich and poor, it’s now being exposed within even fairly small companies, which hurl money at the board of directors while hoarding profits and keeping them away from the very people that made that graph rise in the first place through sheer hard work.
I’ve grown to love the National Union of Journalists, because it’s fought my cause on many occasions through my 17 years and it’s more than repaid the £16 a month I pump into it.
And now I look at the RMT and all the efforts it’s going to to transform the fortunes of the thousands of people that prop up our precious rail industry. And I can’t help but think they’re on to something.
I once scoffed at unions for accusing companies of lining the pockets of “fat cats”. But now, in an era in which people need more financial support from the very people who are duty-bound to reward them, I can see where they’re coming from.
For the first time in my life I support the strikes. And I hope they will have a ripple effect across other industries. I hope they will illustrate to profitable companies that the bonuses given to the top brass need to be proportionate to the amount offered to those at the coalface.
I still want capitalism to be the driving force, but I want it to be fair to the people who contribute to its success. Is that too much to ask?