Why are we talking about Britain’s cost of living crisis? The real culprit is bosses’ ‘greedflation’
T hese days there is a lot of talk about a “cost of living crisis”, but as Unite’s most recent research confirms, we should actually be talking about a cost of profiteering crisis. From rising supermarket prices, to energy bills, to transport costs, we are all paying the price.
Take UK Power Networks, the National Grid power distributor. Last financial year, according to Companies House, it made a staggering £1.3bn pre-tax profit. Billions in profit, bonanzas for the executives and shareholders, while there are only real pay cuts on offer for workers.
One worker told my union: “The shareholders are obviously more important than the workers that have secured the company’s reputation and extreme profits. They wouldn’t even notice the difference if they paid us in line with inflation, it’s just outright obstinance that they choose not to.”
The profiteering crisis isn’t just a few “bad apples” like UK Power Networks: it’s systemic. In the first half of 2022, FTSE 350 companies saw their margins up by an average of 89% on the same period in 2019. That is astonishing corporate greed on a historic level. In the US, economists call it “price gouging”. Their economists have identified a “second round” of inflation as many companies raised their prices well above their costs in a conscious attempt to boost profits.
In 2021, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda doubled their combined profits compared with 2019 to £3.2bn. Likewise, big brand food manufacturers such as Nestlé and Unilever have seen their corporate profits soar. From energy to food, hikes in our bills are seen in these soaring profits.
George, a tunneller on the HS2 project, hasn’t had a pay increase “for ages”. “The money is coming in but it’s not staying in the account. Food,
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