BRIAN READE: 'Alexander Isak's strike grabs headlines but it's low-paid workers who need attention'
We need to worry less about football stars Alexander Isak and Yoane Wissa striking to engineer a career-enhancing move, and worry more about people desperate to save their livelihoods and protect their living standards, argues Brian Reade
You may not be familiar with the strike at Wakefield’s National Coal Mining Museum where 40 staff have walked out over a derisory pay rise offer of 80p an hour.
Even though the irony of the walkout is pretty newsworthy with this year marking 40 years since the end of the landmark miners’ strike, which is a major component of the museum.
And unless you live in Sheffield you probably haven’t heard about Unite members striking at Veolia for union recognition by the French-owned refuse company. That’s despite them being out for more than a year, and workers from across the world turning up to show support for their struggle to gain the most basic of rights.
But there’s a good chance you may have heard about two Premier League footballers who downed tools after claiming their clubs reneged on promises to let them leave and fill their boots elsewhere.
Because for months, the media has been full of the saga of strikers Alexander Isak and Yoane Wissa demanding exits from Newcastle United and Brentford against their bosses’ will. And on Monday when they secured those exits, and their clubs made tens of millions profit on their backs, the morality police were in full throat.
There were screams about football being bankrupt and broken, that these overpaid prima donnas symbolise everything that’s wrong with the world, and how it’s obscene that kids look up to these shysters as role models.
Footballers always get a kicking. Remember during Covid when Health Secretary Matt Hancock attempted to shame them by saying live on TV: “Given the sacrifices people are making, including some of my colleagues in the NHS, I think the first thing Premier League footballers can do is take a pay cut.”
Yes that’s right, even Matt Hancock handed out moral lectures.
And even though I have sympathy with fans who feel let down by players for effectively withdrawing their labour and shafting the club (although ironically Newcastle fans have now welcomed Wissa to their bosom despite him doing the same thing to Brentford that Isak did to them) the overblown fury reeks of double standards.
Hundreds of transfers went through smoothly this summer and hundreds more players were brutally cast aside by clubs who no longer wanted them. The truth is that when even the best players pass their peak, or get a serious injury, they are mostly sidelined and shipped out to the highest bidder.
The striking strikers, both foreigners with no emotional connection to the clubs they wanted to leave, are simply byproducts of an industry riddled with hypocrisy, greed and self-interest from top to bottom.
Meanwhile, in Birmingham, hundreds of bin workers who have been on strike for six months over fire-and-rehire pay cuts – which could cost up to 170 already low-paid workers as much as £8,000 a year – have voted to carry on withholding their labour into next year.
Even though some have been forced to put their houses up for sale and all face the grimmest of winters if the Labour council doesn’t compromise and bring to an end a strike that has left Brummies in despair. Maybe let’s worry less about a couple of footballers temporarily striking to engineer a career-enhancing move, and worry more about the lowest paid striking to save their livelihoods and protect their living standards.
That’s what the morality police should really be getting stuck into.
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