Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham’s Christmas message to Labour – time for super-rich Scrooges to pay up
Unite members, along with many other workers, are the “the men and the women who work hard every day in all parts of our country” that Rachel Reeves spoke about in her Budget speech.
The Government said they would “back” them. But the extension of stealth taxes in the budget has, instead, picked the pockets of workers, while the super-rich have been left all but untouched. Last year, the Government chose to keep the Tory freeze on income tax thresholds in place but promised not to extend it beyond 2028. Last month they broke that promise and kept thresholds frozen until 2031.
This will hit almost everyone’s take home pay. A worker on £25,000, whose pay goes up by RPI inflation, would pay close to £1,000 extra in tax over the next five years. If the Budget had ended the freeze that would not apply. That’s a tax hike for the lowest paid of 1.5%.
Additionally, by 2029, workers not too far above the UK’s average wage, will be dragged into the higher tax bracket. One in four workers will be paying 40% tax, on the high end of their pay. So, thousands of workers in sectors like Aerospace, Automotive, Energy and Finance will find themselves paying higher rate tax.
From 2029, workers will also be hit by a second stealth tax, limiting the National Insurance relief on salary sacrifice pensions. In the Budget it was suggested that this would mainly target bonuses in the City of London. However, HMRC estimates this will affect 3.3 million workers so it isn’t a targeted ‘bankers’ bonuses’ tax by any stretch of the imagination.
Many workers have won hard fought decent pensions through collective bargaining in their workplaces. A Labour Government’s Budget now puts this at risk. Polling suggests 31% of businesses will attempt to reduce their pension contributions if this reform goes ahead.
I really cannot fathom why a Labour Government would choose to attack workers’ pay through stealth taxes and put pensions at risk – instead of taxing the super-rich. We, of course, need to put more money into our hospitals and schools. And we are aware of the scale of UK government debt and interest payments.
But the main reason we are saddled with high debt is because we bailed out the banks in the 2008 Crash. Our debt to GDP ratio doubled as a result, from 35% to 70%. Now, the banks are again making bumper profits – in the UK last year the big 4 UK banks made eye-watering profits of £20.3 billion. And City bankers are queuing up to collect their bonanza bonuses.
Our research shows that since the banks crashed the economy real wages have gone down by £11,000. And yet Labour’s Budget chose to tax workers. Billionaires and the super-rich got off lightly. Instead of a real wealth tax, the Budget’s taxes on dividends and expensive properties will raise just a fraction of the amount being taken in new taxes from workers.
It’s not too late for Labour to drop the stealth taxes on workers’ pay and pensions. It’s time to raise the money needed to rebuild the country from those who have caused the crisis, and profited from it.
Our energy bills go up and up and up. Profiteering by companies owned by other states are to blame.
Since 2021 our energy bills have rocketed by 42%. Unite has investigated the real reason why household bills have gone through the roof. The answer – Energy Profiteering.
Unite’s Energy Profiteering research shows that, in 2024, UK-based energy companies made £30 billion in profit. That is a truly mind-boggling sum. It means that £500 of the average annual household bill of £1780 is paid purely for Big Energy’s staggering profits.
Energy profiteering has led to UK households paying the highest bills in Europe. Even if the Budget changes push bills down by £150, they will still be much higher than four years ago. We need to call time on the share of our energy profits taken by the multinationals owned by foreign countries.
Successive UK governments seem to be fine with energy state ownership, as long as it isn’t the UK that’s doing the owning.
Over a third of all UK energy profits effectively goes to foreign states. In 2024, UK gas users handed over £5.9 billion to the Norwegian state sector alone. The German government owns our second-biggest gas-powered generator (Uniper). The French government (EDF) runs our nuclear power stations. The Danish government (Orsted) is building our biggest new wind farms. The Qatar government is a key gas exporter and owns shares in multiple energy companies.
Since the 1980s, UK governments have abandoned publicly owned energy provision. Foreign state-owned companies are currently those who benefit the most from this, as year after year they return unbridled profits from our energy system. Again, workers and communities pay. It’s time to bring energy into public ownership and put an end to this madness once and for all.
Sickness isn’t the real cause of our productivity crisis. A lack of investment is.
With so many of our politicians seemingly intent on lambasting the sickness records of British workers, I think it’s proper to identify what is the real driver of our productivity crisis. UK productivity may well be lower than in France, Germany and United States – but most of this gap is due to a lack of investment in capital and skills in the UK.
Back in 2023 the IPPR think tank reported that since 2005, the UK had underinvested to the tune of half a trillion pounds – or to quantify that – the cost of 30 Elizabeth lines in the London Underground. Even after Labour’s commitment to increase capital spending, our investment rates remain among the lowest in the OECD. Put simply, there has been a catastrophic failure within both the private and public sectors, to invest in UKPLC.
We now face a vicious cycle of stagnation and decline. The politician who commits to breaking free of this doom loop, will reap the rewards at the ballot box.
Stop putting net zero targets in place without a proper plan for jobs.
The Government has lots of “green” targets to help with climate change but, like the person overboard clinging to the lifeboat, we cannot let go of one rope before we have hold of another. The lack of joined-up thinking on the transition to net zero is putting hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk.
For example, the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate obliges car factories to sell more electric vehicles (EVs) each year or face fines. All happening at a time when Europe seem to be relaxing their rules on the production and sale of petrol and diesel powered vehicles.
Lack of investment in infrastructure, including charging points in the UK has meant fewer people are buying electric cars and manufacturers have been scaling back production. Who really pays? No doubt it will be workers with their jobs. We won’t solve the climate crisis by putting our auto plants at risk from cheaper imports from China.
The wonder of our NHS
My wonderful Dad turned 90 recently. Fit as a fiddle. Normally. But the other day when he went out to the shops, he had a serious fall. It was so bad he ended up in the A&E at the local hospital.
It’s all good news because the treatment he got there was simply outstanding. He was treated with remarkable care by the nurses and doctors on duty. We should never forget behind the headlines of crisis, how important our NHS is, how committed the staff are, and how we need to nurture, treasure and invest in it. What a blessing it is for us all.
The nurse looking after my Dad asked “ How did you fall Mr Graham?”. He said “Well, I was running for a bus”. The nurse replied with a smile “Like you do when you are 90”.
