Motion #11
A motion stating general support for workers organising industrial action to demand pay to match or exceed the rate of price inflation.
This Conference notes that rates of price inflation have risen sharply in 2022, with the CPIH measure reaching 8.2% and the RPI measure reaching 13.7% in the 12 months to June 2022. These official measures do not capture the full impact of price rises on the poorest, who generally spend a greater proportion of their incomes on energy, food, rent and other essentials.
Conference notes that price inflation is not being caused by increased wage claims and rejects diagnoses of a so-called ‘wage-price spiral’ phenomenon. Conference notes that wages have stagnated in recent months and are in most cases failing to keep up with the rate of inflation.
Conference believes that the current inflation is being caused by a combination of exogenous factors, including global supply shocks and ecological phenomena, and concentrated corporate power that allows firms to extract ever greater profits. Workers should not be made to pay the price for the crises we are experiencing, and deserve pay increases that match or exceed the real rate of price inflation.
Conference applauds workers taking strike action and other industrial action to demand the government and employers meet these demands for pay and address the cost of living emergency. Conference applauds trade unions that recognise and use their leverage in a capitalist economy to advance the interests of both their members and working people as a whole, and urge unions to coordinate their efforts along industrial lines. We support building strike readiness across the general working population, and the building of a general strike for a political solution to the cost-of-living crisis.
SOC has ruled the final sentence below out of order as it strays too far from the subject of the motion and has complex implications for multiple other areas of policy.
Conference calls for non-wage labour income, such as welfare benefits, to be increased to match or exceed the real rate of inflation.
[OoO starts] Conference further calls for a system of price controls to be introduced on key goods and services such as energy, to immediately mitigate the pressure on household incomes. [OoO ends]