I have to tell you, it's a bit of a cheek having a program asking Trade Unions
being greedy for asking asking for a pay rise.
The foot C 350 top companies in this country.
Dave profits have gone up 73% since 2019.
When are we going to ask, are they being greedy?
>> Damn right.
I love seeing that.
Especially in the context of what appears to be mainstream news broadcast.
They typically doesn't like to share the kind of message you heard from
that union rep.
Who is that union rep?
Well, that's Eddie Dempsey from the UK National Union of Rail,
Maritime and Transport workers RMT.
And he's responding to the corporate media talking heads
who believe that this union striking is just selfish and
it's the wrong thing to do.
How dare you demand better pay for the work that you're demanded to do?
Well, let's see how he handled himself in this interview.
>> What about the railway companies have been ripping this country off for years.
>> The point is.
>> No one asked about their profits.
There's people in this country spending 18% of their income traveling on trains.
We got the highest fares in Europe because profiteers have been robbing this country
blind for years.
At the same time, later on in this year, energy prices are gonna be so high.
Some of my people will be spending two full months of take home pay on energy and
you're telling us that we're greedy for expecting workers to keep up with that.
What we need in this country is a cost of living crisis addressed through the wage
packet and we need price caps on energy, and we need the profits taken down a peg
or two cuz the people at the top of the economy they're having a disco and
everyone else is being told that they've got to carry the can and
tighten their belts.
It's not on.
>> They're having a disco.
>> I love that, they're disco.
>> The disco. >> They're definitely having a disco.
>> They're having a disco.
That interview, I wanna have a disco after listening to that.
But we've got a lot more but John.
>> That was great.
I loved everything he said.
It gave me a little bit of flashbacks to some of the recent seasons of
Peaky Blinders.
But other than that, I really liked what he had to say and
I would very much love to see some of that on TV here.
I mean, we talk about that sort of stuff but
how often are you gonna have an interview like that on CNN and MSNBC.
They don't generally have union reps.
They don't generally have people who are making minimum wage.
Those sorts of people don't, come on.
They have whole networks devoted to interviewing CEOs and things like that.
They call them business networks all from the point of view of the business.
But that was great, and it I love it for two reasons.
One is that we know from just a couple of weeks ago, the Biden administration
stepped in an emergency maneuver to stop a rail strike here in the US.
It concerns about inflation, the supply chain and everything.
Can we really allow the union to strike at this point?
So we'll see maybe you know, fingers crossed that'll work out, but
it will probably result in a deal that's not as good as they could have gotten if
they had been able to strike.
And if they tried to the administration will let them all be fired.
So I love that we're both dealing without the UK and the US.
But also this idea about like completely ignore the profits of corporations,
completely ignore the rise in CEO pay, both of which have risen massively just in
the last year, let alone as that gentleman talked about since 2019.
And we're supposed to pretend that that has nothing to do with inflation, and
that certainly isn't greed.
You will never hear in a business network them talking about it in those terms.
>> Right, and the fact that you'll hear about the various causes
of inflation in American media specifically.
But they'll never discuss corporations exploiting that
narrative to just jack up their prices because they can right?
There's nothing causing the inflation in particular.
But since certain sectors of the economy are experiencing inflation,
whether it's through worker shortages, supply chain issues, whatever.
Even if they're not affected by that, they're like, let's ride this gravy train,
let's just increase our prices, because the media's narrative is inflation.
So why not take advantage of that?
Now, there's a lot more.
Look, let me just make one quick comment about what we've already seen.
I think what's really effective in regard to his style of communication is
that he gets right to the point.
He focuses on workers wages relative to the insane profits
that the company made on the backs of the workers, right?
That money doesn't just magically appear out of nowhere,
that money is generated by the workers, right?
And he does a good job in pointing that out.
And he gets some dunks in when it comes to that anchor,
who thinks that the striking workers are super selfish for doing this.
So let's take a look at more of that exchange.
>> Workers pay rises cannot keep up with inflation if you're not to have
a wage price spiral.
You know that to be.
>> Absolutely rubbish.
What's caused inflation is the shock of the supply chains from the global
health emergency and rampant profits, 73% profits are up since 2019.
Pay at the top is going through the roof, what I'm worried about.
>> You cannot match inflation.
>> Why not? >> I've just explained,
because then you get into the then you get into the wage price.
>> People at the top of their profits can carry on going through the roof.
For 30 years in this country, wages have not kept up with inflation.
At the same time, profits have really not exceeded inflation.
There has been a transfer of wealth from working class people to people at the top.
And that can't carry on, that has got to change.
>> No I really appreciate that they brought in the granny from Downton Abbey
to debate him on that panel.
Pretty amazing.
>> We'll get to harry potter references student.
Don't worry.
We've watched multiple things from the UK.
Yeah, no she thinks that she has the magic bullet in this argument that she's going
to allude to a concept that the vast majority of people watching are not gonna
be familiar with what it means.
They're just gonna hear it and
think, that sounds like something an economist probably said.
Yeah exactly.
And it's not that in some context she couldn't be right to some limited extent,
but she is pretending as if wages account for 100% of the rise in prices.
If that was the case or if literally the entire price of a product was
only determined by your wages then sure raising the wages would have a natural one
to one effect that clearly isn't what's going on that's on its face obvious.
And it's also directly what that guy is saying.
So to continue to say that raising wages by 10% results in a 10%
increase in prices.
There's literally no reason to believe that,
it is convenient to pretend that I don't know who she is.
I don't know who she's there to represent, but I know that she is representing
the railroad, the CEOs of those companies at this point.
>> Yes, exactly.
So look, as you can see in the lower third that they made for
that interview or that debate.
Are unions being greedy?
Okay, you guys want to ask that question.
I want our audience to judge for themselves.
Maybe the unions are being greedy.
Let's give you the details you guys can judge.
So what do they want?
What do the workers want in order to stop striking?
Well the RMT says Network Rail is threatening to cut safety critical jobs.
Sounds like a great idea.
Network Rail rejects that characterization by the way.
As part of its modernization program which would also include an increase in
working hours and with inflation soaring, the union is just simply asking for
a pay raise that mitigates the pain for its members.
Against an inflation rate heading toward 11%,
the union wants a rise of 7% and
has already rejected a network rail offer of
a 2% rise with a further 1% tied to job cuts.
>> That is such a pathetic offer.
>> Inflation is at 11%.
And the workers are, all right bro listen, we have less buying power and
we know that you're never gonna give us an 11% pay raise.
So let's just be reasonable, why don't we cut it down to 7%?
And the answer is what about 2%, right?
So that's why they're striking.
>> And 1% if you sign on to be okay with us sacking a bunch of people.
It's like we'll give you $100 but you can get 25 more if you shoot this puppy.
There's there to represent those people too, what a messed up way to frame that.
>> Absolutely, and
I just want to show you cuz it's a good visual Aaron Bustani tweeted it.
A great amount of ink is being spilled in the media to somehow convince
people that RMTs demands are outrageous and excessive judge for yourselves.
And the graph demonstrates in my opinion meager 7% pay raise
that the workers are striking for
relative to all of the different ways inflation is impacting their lives.
So obviously we're all experiencing the pain when it comes to
energy bill increases in the UK it's 73%.
Again, compare that to the meager 7% pay raise that
the workers are just asking for here and they're not getting.
So more power to them.
This is the reason why people join unions.
So you have this representation.
So you're not this individual floating around trying to defend yourself and
defend your livelihood.
You're working together with your fellow colleagues, with your fellow workers.
You're striking together, you're fighting together and you have more of
an opportunity more chance to get better treatment, better pay.
And I hope that's what they get here.
I hope their demands are met.