WOT about the workers?

That age-old cry from the heart of the oppressed majority seems particularly relevant in these troubled times.

Jobless totals are rising and thousands of graduates and school leavers will not be able to find suitable employment this summer because many firms have halted recruitment.

Even worse, the lucky folk still in a job are being hit with a wide range of unpalatable options that include working for nothing, wage freezes or reductions, taking extended holidays without the cash to go anywhere and significant cuts in the value of their pensions.

Organisations that exist to help ordinary people, particularly political parties and trade unions, are being rendered increasingly impotent in the face of the current onslaught.

Gloomy experts predict that, in spite of alleged sightings of the green shoots of recovery, economic woe is likely to continue for several years yet and we can expect many more workforce cutbacks in both the private and public sectors.

After all, when politicians talk about eliminating waste and increasing efficiency in government departments they usually mean staff cuts.

There were no doubt wry smiles as worried workers tuned in to ITV1 last Sunday night and saw a re-run of a 1983 episode of Brass, the genuinely funny master and slaves series that milked every Northern industrial cliché going and served as a satire on Thatcherite Britain.

I laughed out loud at a comedy programme on television for the first time in years and I wonder how many modern employees — worried about the future — sympathised with the cap-wringing souls waiting hopelessly for a good deal from the monstrous boss, Bradley Hardacre, played brilliantly by Timothy West.

If my memory is correct, Bradley believed firmly in “a good week’s work for a good day’s pay”.

These days, of course, there is little opportunity to plead a case at “the big house” because the people making the decisions are usually anonymous and based elsewhere in the world.

The effects of the global financial crash are being felt everywhere and before long we will all know somebody who is suffering.

Who is going to make life better? We can presume that surviving companies that have made savings in the current crisis will not be overly keen to restore jobs and rewards to previous levels when the recession is over.

That’s the way it is, so it will probably be down to the government.

The only trouble is that Gordon Brown and New Labour are not convincing the working class, if it still exists, that they can do much to help.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader who expects to be Prime Minister after next year’s election, faces the same problem.

There is a sense of helplessness that is feeding into public perceptions and the two main parties need to show the modern equivalent of honest sons and daughters of toil that they have some ideas for stopping their working lives imploding.