Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
Enough is enough – workers demand a pay rise
We cannot let this be another decade where the super-rich steal an even bigger slice of the pie at the workers’ expense – that’s why I’m calling for a £15-an-hour minimum wage, writes JON TRICKETT MP

WORKERS in our country have endured decades of stagnating wages.

Since Thatcher’s attacks on trade unions in the 1980s, more money has been going to shareholders in the form of profits and less has been going to workers in the form of wages. Successive governments have kept Thatcher’s labour market reforms intact. 

The Conservatives’ policy of austerity and wage restraint in the 2010s caused the longest pay squeeze since the time of the Napoleonic wars. It took 13 years for workers’ wages to return to the levels they were before the global financial crisis of 2008. 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
CRUNCH TIME: (Left to right) Wales Green Party Leader Anthony Slaughter, Reform UK’s Dan Thomas, Welsh Labour Leader and First Minister Eluned Morgan and Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth
Features / 7 May 2026
7 May 2026

The election offers a critical chance to shape the future of pay, care and community provision in Wales, says Unison’s JESS TURNER

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage speaks during a rally at the Arena MK Stadium, in Bletchley, Milton Keynes, March 17, 2026
Politics / 21 March 2026
21 March 2026

Young Communist League general secretary GEORGINA ANDREWS says the far right are filling a vacuum created by Labour’s abandonment of working-class interests — we have to give our class a better offer

WE MUST DO BETTER: Jon Trickett speaks in the House of Commons, September 10 2025
Labour Conference 2025 / 29 September 2025
29 September 2025

We cannot refuse to abolish the unjustifiable two-child benefit cap that pushes children into poverty while finding billions of pounds for defence spending — the membership and the public expect better from Labour, writes JON TRICKETT MP

WAY FORWARD: People's Assembly Against Austerity protest in central London on June 7 2025
Politics / 11 July 2025
11 July 2025

RICHARD BURGON MP points to the recent relative success of widespread opposition to the Labour leadership’s regressive policies as the blueprint for exacting the changes required to build a fairer society