Can we all just calm down and agree that their all overpaid!
No I can't agree with that.
£45k for doing a vital job which regularly involves starting work long before most people have even thought of getting out of bed and finishing long after most have got home, plus working weekends, and in which thousands of people's safety is your responsibility, does not represent being "overpaid" imo.
£45k is an excellent salary which reflects the responsibility and all year round unsociable hours which come with the job. But to suggest that a tube driver working the day after Christmas Day deserves no extra money because it's no different to any Saturday or Sunday, is frankly taking the piss.
Tube drivers are well paid, but that fact should be celebrated rather than condemned. Because despite trying for the last thirty years a low wage economy does not deliver results. The reason why Britain, the Eurozone, and the US, for example, are in such dire economic straits is precisely because of the constant drive for lower wages.
Since the neoliberals started setting the agenda 30 years ago wages as a percentage of GDP have fallen whilst the rich have got richer and, unsurprisingly, the poor poorer.
Income inequality growing faster in UK than any other rich country, says OECD
To deal with the paradox of overproduction/underconsumption the neoliberals had a "solution"........easy credit. Capitalism needs working people not only to produce goods and services, but also to act as consumers for goods and services.
Despite their vast economic power the effect of the stinking rich on the market is negligible. Overwhelmingly, the market exists to service the needs of ordinary working people. Provide them easy credit to buy what they need/are told they need, whilst keeping their wages low, and that gives them the purchasing power which Capitalism demands of them.
Only it doesn't work ..... as the credit-fuelled boom/crises has clearly proved. Globally.
What we need is less concentration of wealth in the hands of the few and more wealth distributed among ordinary working people, ie, less inequality, not more - which is what we're getting at the present.
The Instability of Inequality
The tube drivers are doing their bit towards achieving this, Transport for London management isn't.
Low paid tube drivers dependent on easy credit or, living austere lives, is not the answer. A living wage and full employment is.
