国际英语新闻:Workers in Britain suffer longest decline in pay since days of Charles Dickens: trade union

LONDON, Dec. 15 (Xinhua) -- British workers have experienced the longest decline in real wages since the era of social writer Charles Dickens more than 150 years ago, the umbrella organisation for trade unions, the TUC, said Thursday.

In a new report, the TUC said workers in Britain had also seen the largest decline in pay of any developed economy except Greece.

Highlighting what it described as the rise of job insecurity in modern Britain, the TUC said 10 years ago it established a Commission on Vulnerable Employment (CoVE). The aim was to examine the increase in the proportion of workers at risk of poverty and injustice due to an imbalance of power in the employer-worker relationship.

A decade later, there has been a significant increase in the number of people in work, with 2.6 million more people now in the labor market in Britain.

The TUC said: "While this increase in employment is welcome, it has been accompanied by two major changes in the experience of work."

"Working people have experienced a significant downgrade in their pay. Pay is still around 20 pounds (25 U.S.dollars) a week below its pre-crisis levels, and not set to return to those levels until 2021."

"British workers have experienced the longest decline in real wages since 1864, and have seen the largest decline of any developed economy except Greece and a growing number of people face insecurity at work."

The TUC said its CoVE update is the first of a new series focusing on insecure employment.

It puts forward a five-point action plan, calling on the government to address job insecurities in the workforce. It includes rights at work for employees, family-friendly rights, protection from being unfairly fired.

This was the first in a series of TUC reports looking at the new insecure workforce. This report concentrated on describing the new insecurity. Future reports will set out in more detail how these issues should be addressed.

However, the TUC believed that there are five areas where government should act to ensure that everyone has decent rights and protection at work.

Make sure that everyone can access the same floor of rights at work, family-friendly rights, protection from being unfairly fired and the right to redundancy pay.

It said that as an immediate first step, the government should create a legal presumption that everyone qualifies for the full set of employee rights. The report also urged the government to scrap fees of up to 1,500 U.S.dollars that prevent many workers from challenging unfair dismissal at employment tribunals.

The TUC report concluded with a call to strengthen workers'ability to organize for better conditions at work through trade unions.