Worse and worse news for workers

If ever news in one week signalled that skirmishes in the fight for the rights and conditions for workers and trade unions are approaching a climactic battle, it was during this week.

From the weekend a string of stories spotlighted issues of which every worker is well aware - swaggering bosses and politicians cocky with confidence are hammering everything in sight.

The writing's on the wall because Tory grand plans to bring the workers to their knees and smash workplace union power are beginning to ripen.

Bosses, of course, are laughing all the way to the bank with ballooning salaries.

Each year's new Chelsea tractor models are packing corporate car parks while workers see wages frozen or falling as inflation and bus fares rise.

Four or five years ago bosses cottoned on to the bigger unions recruiting workplace activists to drum up membership. How did they know? Not every worker is on his or her own side.

Worried whispers started then in the Rotary clubs and fancy breakfast meetings, became clarion calls when the Tories managed to wangle a slender mandate in 2010 and have since been stealthily answered.

David Cameron and his gang have used the drip-drip technique to build the reservoir - now take a look at the political, social and industrial landscape.

Back to this week. Danger warnings sounded from last Sunday.

Front-line organisations opened the curtains on millions facing insecurity, moving in and out of jobs, and poverty, and predicted government austerity measures were going to rampage for six more years.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said over six million people classed as living in poverty were in households where people worked.

The New Policy Institute said, excluding pensioners, in-work poverty now outstrips workless poverty - 1.4 million people were now working part-time when they wanted a full-time job, a rise of 500,000 since 2009.

Spending on benefits and tax credits has never been higher - at 13 per cent of GDP or national income - while almost five million people have claimed jobseeker's allowance at least once in the last two years.

Also, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said George Osborne may have to push out the current squeeze on public spending to 2017-18 and find another £11 billion from cuts or tax rises on top of the further £8bn projected.

The Work Foundation added to the woes saying Britain will suffer a decade - repeat, decade - of low productivity growth and stagnating living standards unless the government pumped out billions of pounds of investment.

And the hearth-side social costs? A survey said almost three out of every four workers lose more than three hours every weekend worrying about work.

Populus said Sunday-night blues hit 53 per cent of workers worried about the dreaded Monday morning.

Not surprisingly, the most common concerns were about job security and the threat of redundancy, and a fifth of workers worry they are not fulfilling their potential at work.

Yet more research - this time from the Institute of Financial Planning - showed four out of five people fret about the state of their finances compared with three out of five a year ago.

And to pile on the misery - government support to help families struggling in fuel poverty has been cut by more than a quarter in the past few years, according to a new report from the Association for the Conservation of Energy.

It needed a reality check. Step forward Bob Crow, general secretary of transport union RMT, who called for a European-wide general strike in the new year.

He said: "We've talked about general and co-ordinated strike action, but with reports now showing workers are taking the biggest battering since the depression of the 1930s now is the time for action.

"We've seen our brothers and sisters fighting the EU cuts assault on the streets of Greece and Spain and if they can mobilise mass resistance to the political and business elite then so can we."

Over at the TUC where we're expected great things from Frances O'Grady, general secretary Brendan Barber said: "Unemployment has always been a fast-track to poverty, but it's shameful that for millions of people in Britain today, work is no longer a route out of it.

"People are taking any job they can to make ends meet but unless our economy starts growing again we won't deliver the high-quality full-time jobs that people really need.

"Some employers are fuelling low pay Britain by paying staff the bare minimum when they can easily afford to pay more."

Trade union activists and other progressives should start polishing their armour even harder. It really is a call to arms, and the streets.