Express your love for the unions this Valentine’s Day

IF you’re looking for love this Valentine’s Day, ditch the schmaltzy cards and chocolate hearts and carry out the ultimate act of self-love: pick up a union membership card.

There are so many reasons to join a union. But with the cost-of-living crisis lingering on, getting a fair pay rise is a significant one. Put simply, wages are in a mess. Average pay in the UK is still £13 a week less than before the crisis began.

And there is more pain ahead. Despite falling inflation, it looks as if the contraction in UK household budgets is going to get worse.

But we all know this isn’t the case for everyone. The big bosses and the shareholders are still raking it in.

While most people are waiting for their wages to catch up with the level they should have been nearly 20 years ago, FTSE CEO pay has increased by £500,000 in the last year. To put that into context, FTSE CEO’s now earn in a few days what most people earn in a year.

Joining a union can change this. Joining a union can get you a pay rise.

Just last year we saw over 1,000 Go North East bus drivers secure a pay rise of 11.2%. Before the victory, the average wage for a driver at Go North East was just £12.83 and had actually fallen by 5% in real terms since 2018. All the while the bus division of the wider Go Ahead Group was making profits of nearly £85m. There was clearly more than enough to go around.

Over at Darchem Engineering in Stockton we saw GMB members secure a pay rise worth up to 13% after initially being offered 6%. And at Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust we saw Unison members secure a well-deserved regrading for Health Care Assistants.

These wins show just how powerful collective bargaining can be.

So turn the roses into a pay rise and join a union this Valentine’s Day.