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Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has warned there could be “hundreds of disputes” across UK businesses if workers are “made to pay the price for inflation”.
A new report from Unite, Corporate Profiteering and the Cost of Living Crisis, argues that inflation and corporate profits are at the heart of the current cost of living crisis.
Unite said it was time to demand restraint “on profiteering not pay”.
“Calls for wage restraint by employers who slashed pay during the pandemic are abhorrent. Ordinary workers have already had a spring, summer, autumn and winter of discontent for years. It’s time to stop telling workers to pay the price for inflation and to start demanding an end to excessive profiteering,” Graham stated.
“There could be hundreds of disputes involving tens of thousands of people over the coming months if workers are made to pay the price for inflation.”
She said that since she was elected general secretary in August 2021, 63,000 Unite members had been involved with disputes of some form “winning over £50m”, and said workers were “growing in confidence and becoming more assertive”.
Recent disputes involving the printing industry include strike action and pickets at Sun Chemical, while industrial action is set to take place by Royal Mail managers later this month.
Separately, the result of the strike ballot involving some 115,000 CWU members at Royal Mail, also over pay, will be announced next week.
Graham made the comments in an interview with BBC economics editor Faisal Islam.
In her forward to the report, she stated: “It should not be controversial to suggest that those who have profited from crisis should pay for it. And yet so many commentators repeat the mantra that, with notable exceptions, it is workers who must carry the burden. Whether that be that through higher taxes or cuts to their living standards through ‘wage restraint’.
“But when we look deeper at the data available, it becomes very clear that many corporations in many sectors of the economy, not just energy, have benefited greatly from the crisis. Surely, then, it is they who must bear the responsibility? Surely those who can pay should do so?”
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