2017 cries out for a
reawakening of collective struggle and class politics in an age of class
war by the rich against the rest of us.
The wide and growing chasm
between the richest and the rest of humanity makes the Grand Canyon look like a
small sheugh. Just eight billionaires on the planet - yes, 8 men - have more
combined wealth than the poorest 3.6 billion people on Earth.
They
quaff champagne and canapés whilst talking about workers' productivity, in a
world where one in nine people go hungry, according to Oxfam.
They
arrive in private jets whilst pretending concern for climate change.
And
just to ram home the class divide across the globe - even in Davos - the
white-badged, tax-dodging elite at the WEF have access to the plushest of
all posh parties, whilst the purple-badged support staff are excluded.
And these obscenities on legs
have the audacity to discuss their 'concerns' about the rise of the populist
right, the dangerously distorted backlash against their preferred form of
exploitation - globalization.
Davos - where the world's rich plan
how to plunder our labour and planet
Planned Poverty
In our own small corner of this
class-ridden globe, the UK's fat cat company executives earned as much - £28,200
- in the first two-and-a-half days of 2017 as it takes the average-paid worker
an entire year to earn.
Put another way, the average
top dog in the FTSE 100 companies grabs as much for himself as paid out to
10,000 workers in a Bangladeshi garment factory - with none of the risks to
life and limb.
This
gaping chasm between capitalist overlords and the real wealth-producing class -
workers, of all kinds - is no accident of nature; it's the result of decades of
conscious, savage assaults on workers' rights, organizations and conditions.
Especially over the past 30
years, since the defeat of the heroic miners' strike, wages have been
slaughtered to the lowest share of national wealth since records began; the
right and ability to combine in collective union struggle has been savaged by
the worst anti-union laws in the western world; casualised, insecure
forms of employment have been deliberately used - in tandem with the weapon of
fear - to turbocharge profits by enslaving millions in low-paid jobs.
A new report shows that 20
years ago, 1 in 20 men in this country tried to survive on low-paying,
part-time jobs; that has skyrocketed to 1 in 5 men in 2017.
'Precarious Pay Penalty'
Pressure groups and think tanks
conjure up ever-new phrases for the same old super-exploitation of workers. The
latest is a report showing that the one million workers suffering the nightmare
insecurity of Zero Hours Contracts are hit by a 'Precarious Pay Penalty' of
£1,000 a year. On average they are paid 38% less than similar workers - with
similar skills, experience, education and background, in similar jobs - who are
permanently employed.
ZHCs
are proven to be weapons to deliberately drive down wages.
Struggle - or Things Can Only
Get Worse
And things are set to get worse
in 2017, unless a ferocious resistance is organised by workers, their unions
and socialists.
Several new Tory measures are
about to be implemented, designed to further batter down workers to boost
profits. Their 2016 Trade Union Act makes it harder to hold strike ballots and
threatens to criminalize strikers from April onwards.
Theresa May has pledged a
'Great Repeal Act' in the Queen's Speech this Spring, to provide Westminster a
free hand to slaughter employment rights post-Brexit.
Brexit is a handy excuse to
jack up prices, whilst wages are forecast (by the Tory government itself!) to
remain stagnant until at least 2021.
Tory Chancellor Hammond has
highlighted their willingness to cut corporation tax even further, in retaliation
for any import tariffs from the EU, whilst shedding the 'red tape' of the
European Court of Justice. Health and Safety regulations (of which 41 out of 65
originated in the EU) face a bonfire. The Tory Brexiteers see that, and the
dismantling of EU Working Time Directives, as their golden opportunities to
squeeze more out of workers, regardless of the effect on their health.
What is to be done?
The crunch question is what organised - and not-yet-organised - workers do about this cataclysmic catalogue of exploitation, job insecurity, poverty and inequality. And in Scotland, what the SNP government is prepared to do to resist - on behalf of the working class majority, not of capitalists yearning for a profitable place in the EU single market.
The crunch question is what organised - and not-yet-organised - workers do about this cataclysmic catalogue of exploitation, job insecurity, poverty and inequality. And in Scotland, what the SNP government is prepared to do to resist - on behalf of the working class majority, not of capitalists yearning for a profitable place in the EU single market.
The recent wave of strikes by workers on the railways, airlines, Crown Post Offices and pockets of council staff are to be heartily applauded for putting up resistance.
But
the trade union movement leadership has to do more than applaud; they need to
coordinate and build such action, confronting the anti-union laws when they
stand in the way of progress; defying laws against solidarity action; coming to
the aid of any group of workers criminalized for picketing, under the Tory
Trade Union Act.
Victories for workers and their
campaigning allies in the gig economy - Uber, Deliveroo, etc - and other
precarious sectors (such as hospitality) needs to be spread and replicated by a
plan of action by all unions.
SSP demanding funds for council jobs and services
Defy all Cuts
Council unions need to step up
to the mark and resist savage council cuts, issued by Westminster, passed on by
Holyrood, and implemented by Labour and SNP councils alike.
The
call for No Cuts Defiance Budgets and cancellation of historic debts at council
level, as a platform to demand back the £millions stolen by Westminster and
Holyrood, is critical to this opposition - in the wake of 40,000 job losses in
Scotland's 32 local authorities since 2007.
£10 Now - with 16 Hours Minimum Guaranteed
Central to the struggles
required in 2017 are measures to combat poverty-stricken, insecure jobs, and
its ugly twin, inequality.
Trade unions and socialists
need to escalate the campaign for a decent living minimum wage - legally
enforced - of £10 for all over 16. Not in 2020, but now!
Instead of letting Zero Hours
and Short Hours Contracts drive down wages, we need to demand security of
employment, including for workers who prefer part-time jobs. That's where the
unions should adopt the pioneering demand - which I first raised in Break the Chains, and is now official SSP policy - for a guaranteed minimum
contract of 16-hours-a-week, only allowing employers to give fewer hours when a
worker, accompanied by their elected union representative, requests it.
Demand a Workers' Charter
Instead of offering a Hobson's
choice between the UK's brutal anti-union laws - which the Tory Brexiteers want
to make even worse - or the anti-nationalisation, anti-worker laws of the
capitalist EU, trade unions and socialists should demand a charter of workers'
rights from the Scottish government, demanding devolution of the powers to
implement them.
The right to freely organise
unions; full collective bargaining; the right to strike, including solidarity
action with other workplaces; elected workers' committees to control day-to-day
workplace operations and conditions; and elected boards of management with a
working class majority - not token 'worker directors' who turn into prisoners
and stooges of the capitalist chief executives.
Immigrants are Not to Blame
Instead of falling for the vicious lies about immigrants causing low pay or job losses - or even conceding an inch to this divisive deceit, as some union leaders have done with their talk of needing to 'control the movement of labour' - they need to fight for all workers, regardless of origin, to have the nationally negotiated rights, rates and conditions for the job, with unity forged in their unions. That's the method deployed by the RMT on the Seatruck freight ferries to the north of Scotland, to their eternal credit.
Instead of falling for the vicious lies about immigrants causing low pay or job losses - or even conceding an inch to this divisive deceit, as some union leaders have done with their talk of needing to 'control the movement of labour' - they need to fight for all workers, regardless of origin, to have the nationally negotiated rights, rates and conditions for the job, with unity forged in their unions. That's the method deployed by the RMT on the Seatruck freight ferries to the north of Scotland, to their eternal credit.
In the face of frightening new facts about appalling health risks through escalating air pollution in Scotland's streets, the unions and their political allies have a duty to popularize the case for full, democratic public ownership of our railways, buses and all transport. With the chaos on the railways, rip-off fares and cuts to bus routes, this is a policy whose time has come.
home of billionaire speculator Georg Soros
- not a supporter of a 10:1 maximum wage!
For a Maximum Wage Ten Times the
Minimum
As working class people's fury at widening inequality grows, we have an opportunity to cut across the poisonous appeal of the populist right by broadcasting clear, fighting measures.
As working class people's fury at widening inequality grows, we have an opportunity to cut across the poisonous appeal of the populist right by broadcasting clear, fighting measures.
Alongside
the fight for £10 Now - which the SSP has fought for consistently for years -
we will campaign to convince the unions to champion a maximum wage. As a first,
modest, even over-generous step, a 10:1 differential between the maximum and
minimum wage would radically redistribute wealth.
When Jeremy Corbyn hesitantly
floated a much-diluted version of the idea of a maximum wage - suggesting a
20:1 ratio between chief executives and their average employee in companies
with government contracts - the press and Labour's right wing went apeshit,
abusing Corbyn's idea as 'idiotic'. Instead of retreating in the face of this
onslaught, the SSP is determined to make 2017 the year when a £10-an-hour
minimum and £100 maximum is on the lips of tens of thousands as a key weapon
against poverty and inequality.
2017: a Year for the Fearless
This is not a year for the
faint-hearted. But as the cliché goes, when the going gets tough, the tough get
going.
If
you're working class, the going has been tough for far too long.
It's
time to get going in a battle to reverse the tide, with fighting slogans and a
willingness to struggle against all the vicious forces waging class war in
defence of profit, poverty and poisonous inequality.
