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Autumn Statement: More austerity means years more wage misery – unions

Workers hit back at ever-harder pay squeeze

GEORGE OSBORNE'S threat to continue austerity will squeeze wages for years to come, trade unionists warned yesterday.

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said the Office for Budget Responsibility's revision of projected pay growth for next year from 3.2 per cent to 2 per cent showed "the failure of the Chancellor's strategy."

She fumed: "(Mr Osborne) said that his policies would eliminate the deficit by next year. Instead we are now told it will be 10 years.

"The worry must be that his policies will continue to fail and that austerity will become permanent with living standards continually depressed."

The Chancellor told MPs the public-sector pay freeze was expected to have saved £12 billion by the end of this Parliament - though evidence shows a pay rise across the sector could boost the economy through resulting consumer spending.

The Treasury refused to say whether it would impose arbitrary limits on the sector's wages in the coming years, saying only that Mr Osborne would take "tough decisions."

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis joined the attack.

He asked: "The government has been boasting about a rise in the number of people in work, but at what cost?"

"If workers are not feeling the benefits of the so-called recovery then who is? Bankers, and those on already huge salaries? Making the rich richer by all means necessary - that's what this government stands for."

And he turned the spotlight on hard-up NHS workers still bearing the brunt of spending curbs.

"A 1 per cent pay rise for all is what the government is denying them," he said.

But teaching union NASUWT found a "tiny glimmer of light" in "an otherwise bleak statement" - pointing to the promise of a review into exploitative "umbrella companies" which transfer the burden of national insurance contributions from bosses to workers.

General secretary Chris Keates said: "The announcement by the Chancellor that he will review umbrella companies is a very small step in the right direction.

"Unfortunately it will not bring an immediate end to the misery of exploitation supply teachers and other workers endure."

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