HI, Agreed - most wage negotions are sorted amicably - no strike action - Though goverment workers are subject to the catch all clause ' ie. if its affordable '  Suprisingly bosses of large organizations do not have this problem. They generally award themselves what they would like - or alternativley get their mates to vote them rises & then recipricoate,  as directiors of companies etc. MPs wages are linked to the upper quartile of national wage increases - in reality they should be linked to the working minimum wage rise.  Workers & Unions are getting smarter & now do sporadic strikes - I would like them to get smarter & do cascading strikes City by City or County by County. Minimum disruption for max news impact.  Strike action Is the only leverage workers have. Lest we forget how and why the Unions were founded. Now we have zero hours contracts & wages that require many people to be on work related benefits. How come,  we the tax payer have to continualy support the free market economy. To be political its actually what the Tory party are designed for, to sequastrate tax payers money into the private sector - hence the Health Service - the Crown Jewels of the Uk is now 75 % privatized - meaning 30 % every tax payers penny spent goes to share holders / directors pay & bonuses etc. Hence the £20 to £30 billion right down of ppe fraud & loans during COVID. Another long ago disgrace was in 2012 the new head Stephen Hester of Royal Bank of Scotland - who had a million pound bonus award - while the bank was bailed out by the tax payer & was still loosing money. Mr Hester’s shares-only bonus payment was worth around £963,000, but it emerged that he could pocket as much as £39million in total during his time with RBS. Do we know how many billions of tax payers money was lost propin up the banks & paying these mega salaries - the free market with minimum regulations at its best. The bank had already set aside £3.3million for Mr Hester’s bonus the year after in 2013.  We seem to overlook the real villans in the pay wars,  The workers need to stick together, wherever possible - ideally we need a law that the has workers with a true stake in the company they work for eg. profit share / representation on the board etc. A law that states no one peron can earn more than 5x to 10x the lowest worker. Remember when we owned the electric & water & gas companies & their profits helped to keep taxes down. Peter

note - the goverment takes our taxes - gives us some back to help us with energy - then we give it straight back to eg. France EDF etc. and all the other private companies making mega money due to the shortage of gas. These energy companies costs have not gone up - it is simply due to a shortage and the hiking of prices.