Contrary to all their warm words about 'valuing trade unions' and 'supporting social partnership', the SNP government appointed a corporate lobbyist (Andrew Wilson) and 23 business representatives to produce the Growth Commission on Scotland's future - but totally excluded the STUC and unions which organise and represent over 630,000 workers.
So it's no wonder the Commission's Report advocates a neo-liberal nightmare of ten more years of low Corporation Tax, low wages, insecure jobs, capped public spending, 'fiscal responsibility' - another decade of savage austerity cuts, in plain English. This is an offer any self-respecting worker will refuse, in anger and disgust. Even compared with the milk-and-water SNP government White Paper - 'Scotland's Future' - published in the run-up to the 2014 Referendum, the Growth Commission Report is a monumental, catastrophic retreat. Far from painting a picture of the future that would recommend Scottish self-government to the huge swathes of working class people yet to be persuaded, the multiple threats to the material well-being of the working class at the core of this document couldn't be better designed to dissuade them if it had been written by hardcore Blairite Unionists.
But unless the independence movement wins the hearts and minds of the working class majority, no amount of cosying up to big business and the multinationals will convert the 45% into a majority for Scottish self-government.
When people rightly object to the total exclusion of the trade union movement - Scotland's biggest civic organisation, by far - from constructing a vision for an independent Scotland, we have the bizarre spectacle of Glasgow SNP councillor, Russell Roberston, who defected from Labour in 2016, tweeting that inviting the unions into the Growth Commission would be like "letting Dracula control a blood-bank".
This is a contemptuous insult to workers and their families - which, to the best of my knowledge, has yet to be denounced by the SNP leadership.
Vampires in Charge of Blood Donors' Future!
In fact, it would be more appropriate to point out that asking a neo-liberal corporate lobbyist and his cohort of business interests to frame the future of the working class majority is like letting Dracula shape the fate of the blood donors - given that it's workers who produce the wealth of the economy, only to see it sucked dry for the profits of a tiny handful.
The STUC and affiliated unions should now combine with genuinely pro-trade union parties to devise an entirely different vision of Scotland's future, in stark contrast to the Blairite dystopia from the SNP's Growth Commission.
One based on secure, well-paid jobs; a minimum wage based on two-thirds male median earnings; a guaranteed minimum 16-hour week instead of casualised labour; progressive taxation to fund jobs, house-building for rent, and other services; democratic public ownership of all public services, transport, energy, banks and big businesses.
That's what we argued back in 2012-14, with many workers persuaded to vote YES by the SSP and Trade Unionists for Independence, because of the vision we presented of a radical socialist change to the society we live in - not a Mini-Me UK capitalism.
That's the kind of Scotland workers need - not a haven for the tax-dodging rich and corporations.
UK's richest capitalist, union-busting, fracking Jim Ratcliffe
We may as well live on two entirely different planets here on Earth, given the grotesque and growing gap in wealth and power between the rich and the rest of us.
Just 61 billionaires now own more wealth than the poorest half of the world's population - 3.8 billion people. The richest 0.1% of the human species - about seven million people - grabbed as much combined wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion since 1980. And the infamous '1%' robbed 27% of the world's newly created wealth over the same period of 1980-2016. Stinking Rich List Closer to home, the Sunday Times' 30th annual Rich List is enough to make you vomit at the nauseating greed on parade by the 1,000 richest people in Britain. You need to be 'worth' a minimum of £115million to gain entrance to this exclusive club.
Between them, the richest 1,000 now sit atop a Himalayan pile of wealth totalling £724billion. Yes, that's an average of £724million each!
And amidst this gathering of the stinking rich, Britain's 145 billionaires are greedily clinging onto £480billion - exactly two-thirds of the total.
Publication of this latest parade of obscene wealth was trumpeted by cries of joy, in the Sunday Times and other capitalist media, that inherited wealth has been replaced by 'self-made entrepreneurs'. Far from being 'self-made', these are people who've crawled to the top by exploiting workers - robbing the unpaid labour of the working class they employ - or speculating on the upper-class casinos known as Stock Markets, hedge funds and banking.
Jim RATcliffe - 'Worth' £21billion? The media odes of joy were especially triggered by the man who climbed to the top of the money mountain, Jim Ratcliffe, 60% owner of petrochemical giant INEOS, the biggest private company in the UK. He's now officially 'worth' £21.05billion... and figures from INEOS insiders suggest he could even possess as much as £27billion. This creature should be all too familiar to workers in Scotland - especially those at Grangemouth petrochemical plant and oil refinery.
Back in 2010, Ratcliffe moved INEOS headquarters to Switzerland to dodge taxes in Britain. The Grangemouth petrochemical plant made operating profits of £31m in 2011 and £49m in 2012 - as part of global profits exceeding £2bn. Not content with these gargantuan profits, Ratcliffe consciously planned a showdown with the Grangemouth workforce and their powerfully organised trade unions in 2013.
He demanded cuts to pay, pensions, shift allowances and bonuses that robbed workers of £10-15,000 each. He set out to smash the unions, victimizing the Unite union convener - aided and abetted by the witch-hunt against him by the Blairite UK Labour Party leadership. And he perversely exploited the fact Grangemouth accounts for 85% of Scotland's fuel supplies and 30% of England's to hold a bazooka to the heads of both Westminster and Holyrood, demanding £150m in subsidies for INEOS' profits.
Grangemouth workers, 2013
Capitalist Dictator
In an insult to language - 'INEOS' is Greek for 'bright new dawn' - Ratcliffe plunged the Grangemouth workforce and the whole of Scotland into darkness and despair by shutting down the petrochemical plant, putting it into liquidation, when the workers fought to resist his wholesale butchery of their conditions in pursuit of even greater profits. This poisonous cocktail of blackmail and bullying forced the unions to accept devastating cuts to conditions, a 3-year pay freeze, removal of union facilities and a 3-year no-strike agreement. And it wrung £9m in grants off the SNP Scottish government plus £125m loan guarantees from Westminster - to pursue a course of profiteering based largely on the use of the environmentally destructive fracking process.
This whole episode blows to smithereens the alleged fairy tale of the 'self-made man'; the 'rags to riches' tale we're peddled - not only to justify Ratcliffe's obscene personal wealth, but also to dupe us into thinking that, with a bit of graft, anyone can become a millionaire or billionaire.
Fairy Tale from Hell
This fairy tale has a monster at its core, a one-man capitalist dictatorship, who not only threatened to wreck 1,350 Grangemouth workers' livelihoods, and those of 2,000 contract workers, but held the elected government to ransom. Successfully! Now he is suing the Scottish government for banning fracking, and issuing legal threats to anti-fracking protestors in England. This truly is the dictatorship of capital, in the form of one multi-billionaire, robbing workers' families, trashing our environment, trampling democracy underfoot, but lauded by the sycophantic capitalist media as a success story.
Even if there were no other 'Jim Ratcliffes' on earth, this one story should be enough to motivate and mobilise for decisive action against the grotesque gap between the rich and the rest of us. But he's not alone. For starters, the other two shareholders in INEOS have joined him in the top 20 in the 2018 Rich List, at joint 16th.
Scotland's Eleven Billionaires Among the filthy rich with some residential link to Scotland itself, we now 'enjoy' the company of 11 billionaires - whose combined personal wealth totals £16.2billion. That's over half the entire annual budget of the Scottish government for the entire Scottish population in the hands of 11 billionaires. And just looking at the top 3 alone, we see their personal wealth INCREASED last year by £920million! Glenn Gordon and family guzzled a net increase of £202m from their whisky and gin empire. John and Kiran Shaw made the Gordons look like paupers, with a wealth increase last year of £606m from their pharmaceutical company, making a sickening profit from the treatment of cancer, diabetes and autoimmune diseases. Sir Ian Wood and family may have observed crises in both the oil and fishing industries in recent times, but managed to scrape together a mere £112m EXTRA in the past twelve months.
Grotesque Wealth Divide In the land of a million living below the poverty line, 52% of them working to stay poor, these figures are obscene. In the state whose workers are enduring wages worth £24-a-week less than in 2008, a full 10% rise in the incomes of the richest 1,000 is an infuriating insult. In the nation where the equivalent of the entire population of Dundee last year relied on emergency food parcels from food banks to avert hunger; where people on benefits can't exist and are driven to the edge; and where energy-rich Scotland condemns at least a million families to fuel poverty, these displays of wealth are grotesque.
Why does all this matter? When we're told there's not enough money in society to pay an immediate £10-an-hour minimum wage to all workers over 16 (rising to match inflation since that figure was unanimously agreed by the unions 43 long months ago!), it matters. When workers march and strike for equal pay for women, it matters. As we struggle to guarantee a living pension after a lifetime's contribution to society; for investment in free public transport, a modern NHS, top-class education or other services... when the rich government of and for the rich tell us it's unaffordable, don't forget the Rich List!
Maximum Income Alongside battling for an immediate £10 minimum wage, and some job and income stability through a legally guaranteed 16-hour minimum working week, we need to popularize the demand for a maximum income, to start to close the yawning gap between the billionaires and the billions, the plundering rich and the rest of us.
Let's illustrate the advantages of an initial 10:1 ratio between the maximum allowable income and the national minimum wage; the policy which the SSP stands for, and which I proposed and won 58% support for at Usdaw union national conference last month. If we use the current (miserly) £7.83 minimum wage for those aged over 25, that would make the maximum income £78.30 an hour - hardly penury! Assuming a maximum 35-hour week, it would allow the richest to earn up to £142,502 a year; not exactly making them scream in agony!
Let the Rich Scream Blue Murder!
Even looking at the tiny list of the UK's 1,000 richest, the overly-generous 10:1 formula for a maximum income would still permit them to roll around in combined incomes of £142million. How in hell could anyone object to that ceiling on their wealth? What on earth would anyone find to spend £142,000 a year on? And if (or when) the monstrously rich scream blue murder about a maximum income killing off incentive, we should laugh in their faces. Remind them that they have always argued and practised the policy that the best incentive to make the rest of us work is low pay; the whip of poverty to drive people to work.
This policy of a maximum income initially set at ten times the national minimum wage is a powerful weapon in a necessary war on both poverty and inequality. Allowing the current crop of Rich List residents to possess £142m between them, as we've calculated above, would hand back well over £723billion to the rest of society this year alone. Imagine what that could mean for wages, NHS spending, education, public transport, job creation.
A Modest Demand
Of course, socialists don't just want to limit the size of the slice of cake grabbed by the rich minority; we want collective, public ownership of the entire bakery! That way society could democratically plan to meet social and environmental needs, rather than allow capitalist profit-hunting wreak havoc on both people and planet.
But a 10:1 maximum compared to a legal minimum wage would be a great start. A very modest demand. But compared to the 183:1 gap between top company chief executives and their average workers - not the lowest paid employees, but average! - it's also a revolutionary change. One pioneered by the SSP, but now also adopted by the mass, 430,000-strong Usdaw union after a full debate at our recent national conference.
Join the Battle!
Join us in battling for a Charter of Workers' Rights that together could transform the lives of millions, including an immediate £10 minimum wage for all over 16, rising with inflation; a guaranteed minimum 16-hour contract for all workers who want it; and an initial maximum income set at 10 times the minimum wage, to combat inequality and win back some of the stolen wealth which workers create in the first place.
The capitalist rich keep their snouts in the trough at all times
The Sunday Times is about to publish its 30th annual Rich List, spelling out the grotesque greed at the top of society.
This report produces the league table of personal wealth for the richest 1,000 people in the UK.
An important detail not known to many of those who read it: the figures of billions and millions amassed by those sitting at the top of the wealth mountain doesn't even take account of what these individuals have in the bank! For mere mortals, any modest savings in the bank are included in calculations for miserly top-up benefits or other entitlements. But the rich flaunt their wealth without having to add their bank balance to the total; so they're even richer than the Sunday Times Rich List says!
Why does all this matter? When we're told there's not enough money in society to pay an immediate £10-an-hour minimum wage to all workers over 16 (rising to match inflation since that figure was agreed by the unions 43 long months ago!), or to meet equal pay claims for women workers, or guarantee a living pension after a lifetime's contribution to society, or invest in free public transport, a modern NHS, top-class education or other services... when the rich government of and for the rich tell us that, don't forget the Rich List!
Two Scotlands in the One Nation
For now, ponder two stark figures amongst many in the 2018 Rich List, as it directly impacts Scotland.
We now 'enjoy' the company of 11 billionaires - whose combined personal wealth (excluding their bank accounts, remember!) totals £16.2billion. That's over half the entire annual budget of the Scottish government for the entire Scottish population in the hands of 11 billionaires.
And just looking at the top 3 alone, we see their personal wealth INCREASED last year by £920million!
Richest family in Scotland quaff obscene sums
Whisky Galore... for the Few
Glenn Gordon and family guzzled a net increase of £202m from their whisky and gin empire.
John and Kiran Shaw made the Gordons look like paupers, with a wealth increase last year of £606m from their pharmaceutical company, Biocon, making a sickening profit from the treatment of cancer, diabetes and autoimmune diseases.
Sir Ian Wood and family may have observed crises in both the oil and fishing industry in recent times, but managed to scrape together a mere £112m EXTRA in the past twelve months.
In the land of a million living below the poverty line, 52% of them working to stay poor, these figures are obscene. In the nation where the equivalent of the entire population of Dundee last year relied on emergency food parcels from food banks to avert hunger; where people on benefits can't exist and are driven to the edge; and where energy-rich Scotland condemns at least a million families to fuel poverty, these displays of wealth are grotesque.
Demand a Maximum Income
Alongside battling for an immediate £10 minimum wage, and some job and income stability through a legally guaranteed 16-hour minimum working week, we need to popularize the demand for a maximum income, to start to close the yawning gap between the billionaires and the billions, the plundering rich and the rest of us.
Let's illustrate the advantages of an initial 10:1 ratio between the maximum allowable income and the national minimum wage; the policy which the SSP stands for, and which I proposed and won support for at Usdaw union national conference last week.
If we use the current (miserly) £7.83 minimum wage for those aged over 25, that would make the maximum income £78.30 an hour - hardly penury! Assuming a 35-hour week, it would allow the richest to earn up to £142,502 a year; not exactly making them scream in agony!
Again, if we look at the three richest families in Scotland, and very generously assume a total of ten of them are 'working' adults, that would still allow three families a combined income last year of £1.42million... instead of the £920million they actually got! It would leave £918.58million to spend on the rest of us.
Without even the full socialist measure of democratic public ownership of the fabulous wealth these three families preside over - to tackle production of green energy and a fully-funded NHS, amongst other things - just this one modest step of a maximum income could begin to transform working-class families' lives.
Which Families Do You Side With?!
Read the Rich List for yourself, and before your blood stops boiling over, commit yourself to battle for measures that will enhance the lives of about 3 million families in Scotland, at the expense of the richest three families and their gluttonous cohort of capitalists and speculators.
Shock merger of Sainsbury's and ASDA throws workers into turmoil
The shock announcement of a merger between Sainsbury's and ASDA will have thrown workers and their families into a terrible state of uncertainty. And between them, the second and third-biggest supermarkets hire over 330,000 people!
Our new Usdaw NEC - only in place for 4 days! - hasn't met yet, so I'm not pretending to represent the views of the union as a whole. But here are some initial, hastily written thoughts on this bolt-out-of-the-blue declaration, first leaked via Sky news on Saturday 28th, then confirmed today (30th) by chief executives of these giant outfits.
Secret talks have been held at least for months, if not over a year, behind the backs of the three recognized trade unions in Sainsbury's and ASDA, and therefore entirely behind the backs of the workers most immediately affected. Workers who turned up for their Saturday shift will have first heard via the media that their fate was being decided by unelected, unaccountable company chief executives, with all the worry and stress that goes with such major moves.
Sainsbury's, Walmart and ASDA fatcats smugly announce secret deal
Social Partnership? Aye, Right!
This brutally explodes the sham of 'social partnership' between employers and staff, companies and workers' unions. It highlights that we may as well live on two planets, for all the fat cat bosses and workers have in common. It displays the class-based contempt big business has for the workers who produce their fabulous profits. Every last detail was decided behind the backs of workers' unions - including that Sainsbury's current Chief Executive Officer, Mike Coupe, will be CEO of the new combination when the merger is completed in a year or so. They can trot out cliches about 'valued colleagues' (as Sainsbury's workers are called) for eternity, but it won't change the cruel reality that profit always comes before people in this system.
Monopoly Capitalism
This 'merger' will create a company with combined revenues of £51billion last year; nearly twice the entire Scottish government budget for the same twelve months. This is monopoly capitalism on display. Leeds-based ASDA was bought over by US multinational behemoth Walmart in 1999. Two years ago, Sainsbury's took over Argos and Habitat. In this latest deal, Sainsbury's is essentially buying ASDA off Walmart in return for £3billion cash to Walmart plus a 42% share for the latter in the new combined company. Whilst workers worried at what's happening today, share prices in Sainsbury's immediately leapt up by 20% on the gambling den also known as the Stock Exchange - meaning Walmart/ASDA's share gained £600m within hours!
The Big Three - Choice, Capitalist-style!
It's hard to guess how Coupe and his counterparts in ASDA and Walmart kept straight faces when they tried to justify the merger with talk of 'greater choice' for customers. The new entity currently accounts for over 30% share of the market - exceeding even Tesco's 27%. The Big Four are set to become the Big Three. How does that amount to 'greater choice'?! It's monopoly capitalism, with galloping polarization between the growing mountain of wealth in the hands of a shrinking handful and the mounting insecurity and poverty pay of millions of workers.
The chief executives have cooed honeyed phrases about 'no plans' for store closures or job losses. Such promises are welcome... on the surface. But 'no plans' is a phrase any union activist can see through. It only means 'no plans we're going to tell you about right now'. As if to pave the path to future betrayal of this 'promise', Sainsbury's Mike Coupe added in the same statement that he "could not dismiss the possibility that regulators [the government's Competition and Markets Authority - RV] could order the disposal of some sites".
Store Closures?
Disposal of sites; that's people's jobs and livelihoods he's talking about! And analysts Global Data reckon over 75 stores will have to go. On top of which the same announcement by Sainsbury's and ASDA bosses admitted they "are targeting savings of £500million, including operational efficiencies."
It doesn't take a retail analyst to warn that if each company has a store in the same town, or same city district, or even same shopping centre, it's overwhelmingly likely one will shut. Maybe not on the day of the merger, but certainly after 'a period of grace', after the alarm bells have stopped ringing at the merger announcement. And that doesn't even account for the threat of 'rationalization' - as the employer class call savage jobs culls - in the huge distribution centres and head offices of each merging partner.
Profit and Bosses' Privilege
If anyone still thinks we should have faith in these promises of 'no plans' of store closures or job losses, they need to recall the nature of those making these statements.
ASDA bosses helped to amass profits of £845m in 2016 and a further £720m in 2017 by subjecting their women workers to lower pay than male equivalents. Sainsbury's are not content with making £589m in profit last year - including a rise of 11% in the second half of 2017; they are also knee-deep in slashing paid breaks, scrapping annual bonuses and scrapping several grades of team leaders and lower management. And Sainsbury's top-dog 'colleague', Mike Coupe, has grabbed a total £6.7million in salary, bonuses and share packages since he took over in 2014. But HIS job is guaranteed, judging by his own announcement!
Cut-throat Competition Undermines Jobs
Without wishing to scaremonger, it's also worth considering the potential threat to jobs beyond some of those of the 330,000 in Sainsbury's and ASDA. In an economic system where cut-throat competition is in the very nature of the beast, the new company will outstrip even Tesco's, and more so Morrisons. The drive to win more of the market share could also unsettle jobs in those two competing capitalist supermarket giants. And with declarations of price cuts for customers, farm workers and small family farmers will also feel less than overjoyed at this merger; they already know the dictatorship of the Big Four over prices for the food they produce and supply, crucifying smaller producers in particular. Now they face the looming bullies in the form of the Big Three!
So what to do?
Workers in these two supermarkets are organized in three different unions. Usdaw organizes ASDA workers in N Ireland, whilst the GMB organises ASDA in the rest of the UK. Sainsbury's staff are in both Usdaw and UNITE. All three unions have demanded immediate, urgent talks with the top management of the two firms. Quite rightly; the unions have been excluded entirely, treated with high-handed contempt in these secret plans to merge. There should be no inter-union nonsense; no attempts to look after each union's 'own' membership at cost to other workers in the other unions. Unity of purpose and plans is critical. Common demands need to be thrashed out and fought for with maximum unity.
Demand: No Job Losses!
An immediate (and I hope obvious) demand should be 'Not a single job loss'. That is a unifying demand, which should strengthen workers' confidence that the three unions will stand up for all, and block the added workload that would fall on the shoulders of remaining staff, even if future job losses were to take the form of so-called 'voluntary' redundancies. Another appropriate demand from the unions could be 'Open the company secrets to union and public scrutiny'. With the secrecy surrounding this merger, this would allow us to demand answers on where all the profits have gone, what the real plans and prospects are, so as to arm workers with information in the battle to save all jobs, in the event of any future store closures, mergers of distribution hubs, or calls for 'voluntary redundancies'.
Public Ownership
This whole display of monopoly ownership, and the real-life example of the dictatorship of capital over labour - of a couple of chief executives over the lives of a third of a million workers - this whole episode also highlights the alternative of public ownership and democratic control of retail giants, as agreed as a policy at Usdaw's 2017 Annual Delegate Meeting. That's a policy that could replace the bloodletting of capitalist competition with democratically planned production, distribution and exchange.
In the short term, forums of union reps and union officials in each of the unions, and in turn of all three unions combined, would help prepare for whatever action is required to prevent this merger of two capitalist profit-machines from wrecking the lives of thousands of workers.
Sainsbury's CEO, Mike 'We're in the Money' Coupe caught on camera singing his contempt for workers and their livelihoods, just before announcing the secret merger deal...
