Thursday, 31 December 2020

2020 VISION OF CAPITALIST CLASS WAR: build workers’ struggle, solidarity and socialism


Storm clouds are gathering as we turn our backs on 2020 and face the struggles of the rest of the 2020s.

Several groups of workers are flexing their muscles, threatening to fight back against the multiple tributes being hacked out of their jobs, wages and everyday conditions by the obscenely rich elite, to pay for the crises of 2020.

As we reflect on the past year and prepare for the next, nobody should harbour any doubt that class war is raging in the boardrooms of big business.

Employers and governments work in tandem to unleash a massive redistribution of wealth to the rich from the rest of us, with claims this is unavoidable to balance the books after a year of unprecedented state expenditure. And they plan to use Brexit to rob us further.

In battling to defend every penny of workers’ pay, every job and public service, it is necessary to see the bigger picture, to build the widest possible solidarity action in reply.

The past year has given us ‘2020 vision’ of capitalism in all its ruthlessly exploitative nature.

The globalised hunt for ever-greater profit and new capitalist markets has invaded wilder parts of our planet, bringing humans into contact with lethal pathogens, unleashing global pandemics with increased frequency and ferocity - in particular COVID-19, the worst killer pandemic in a century.

Decades of austerity cuts - better described as planned poverty, in pursuit of even more grotesque wealth for a tiny minority - led to entirely avoidable human carnage, with shortages in the NHS and failure to provide protective equipment or safe conditions in care homes and countless other workplaces the most obvious examples.

As 2020 wore on, more and more people spotted the glaring contradiction between rhetoric and reality; between mantras of “We’re All In This Together” and the brutal expansion of inequality.

In just three months the planet's billionaires increased their wealth by 27%, whilst workers on furlough suffered 20% pay cuts, and a record 370,000 others a full 100% loss of earnings from August-October alone, as they were chucked on the scrapheap of unemployment.

Amazon owner Jeff Bezos increased his personal wealth by $87billion since January, equivalent to the entire, combined NHS budgets for the whole of the UK.

The government propaganda nonsense about treating the Coronavirus like a war prompts one picture they would rather hide from us; as with wars, the pandemic has led to further polarisation of wealth, including increased monopolization of ownership.

That is plain to see in the retail sector, the second biggest employer in the country after the NHS. Retail giants like JD Sports and Mike Ashley's Fraser Group battle over who picks up the spoils as Arcadia, Debenhams and countless small firms go to the wall. Big retail thrives, the High Street turns into a wasteland.



Handouts to Big Business

Government policies in response to the pandemic were shaped by the clash of two opposite class interests.

The furlough scheme was the result both of demands by the trade union movement and socialists to protect workers in their jobs, and the fear and loathing of collapsed profits by big business.

Still, it was primarily huge handouts for the capitalist rich and horrendous insecurity for workers. For example, supermarkets got state handouts of £1.9billion in business tax relief, which they converted into handouts of £1.3billion in dividend payments to shareholders and 230,000 redundancy notices this year to retail workers - whose efforts on the front line not only fed the people but fed the profits of the big four supermarkets and their likes.


It's Capitalism to Blame – not just COVID-19

In fighting to shape the future in the interests of the vast working-class majority of the population, we need to be crystal clear it was not the pandemic which created the crisis of job insecurity, pay cuts and threats to essential services, but the capitalist system itself. The pandemic simply exacerbated the crisis.

Pre-pandemic Britain witnessed an incredible 54% rise in the number of people suffering not just poverty, but destitution, between 2017 and 2019. The number of kids condemned to destitution in their formative years rose by 50% in the same two years.

The ultimate indictment of capitalism must be the fact that in the fifth-richest economy on Earth, UNICEF has been obliged to give a grant for breakfast boxes to feed hungry children in South London on Christmas Day; the first such emergency aid to the UK since UNICEF’s foundation in 1946.

Bosses Unleash Class War

As we step into 2021 it is no longer adequate to predict a ruthless crusade by employers and their hired politicians to claw back the costs of 2020 from workers’ pockets; it’s happening already! It requires at least equal determination to defend the class interests of the millions as is on display by the millionaires in their own self-interest.

Patterns are emerging of systematic pay cuts; ‘fire and rehire’ schemes; reductions in sick benefits, terms and conditions; reduced hours of available work, and a slaughter of jobs.

And as Karl Marx identified over 150 years ago, burgeoning unemployment - and indeed underemployment - are being used to bludgeon workers into accepting lesser pay and conditions, with the age-old, obnoxious declaration “You’re lucky to have a job!”


The Struggle Determines the Outcome

Workers in a range of sectors are limbering up for crucial defensive struggles: in BT, Scottish Gas, further education colleges, ScotRail, CalMac ferries, the NHS and wider public sector, etc.

They face the choice of fighting back or being crushed by pay cuts; jobs downgrading: the corporate thuggery of ‘fire and rehire'; decimation of jobs – and the immediate, ongoing threats to health and safety in the workplace, as employers prioritise profit over lives amidst new waves and strains of the killer COVID-19.

There is nothing predetermined in the outcomes of these struggles.

But some things are certain: the employers are out to use the twin viruses of COVID-19 and capitalist recession to beat down workers’ wages, conditions and jobs; to beat workers down onto their knees.

Unless we get up off our knees and fight back with maximum solidarity across sectoral and Union boundaries then working-class people will pay a terrible price at the hands of class enemies who sing hymns of national unity and “We’re All In This Together” as they seek to divide and conquer.


Defeat Divide-and-Rule Tactics

The Tories announced a public sector pay freeze with mock concern at the pay cuts in the private sector, with Rishi Sunak trying to appear sincere when he said: “This means we cannot possibly justify public sector pay rises.”

But they've taken their divide-and-rule trickery even further, trying to split different sections of public sector workers, promising pay rises to at least some NHS staff but not the millions of frontline workers in local government, civil service departments and others who also kept society functioning during COVID-19.

The Scottish government is a bit more cute about this, announcing a £500 award to health and care workers (which of course the Tories insist is taxable!). But that one-off payment still excludes hundreds of thousands of other key workers in Scotland, and should also not be allowed to distract from the entirely justified demands for a 15% pay increase for all NHS staff, which the Scottish government has given no indication of supporting or funding.


£12 Minimum Wage at 16

One of the weapons which SSP trade unionists are determined to popularise in combating the divisive tactics of employers and governments is the demand - first raised by the Scottish TUC during the spring lockdown - for an immediate £2-an-hour pay rise for every key worker, regardless of occupation.

This is an extremely modest but unifying demand in recognition both of the heroic efforts of workers in the NHS, care sector, retail, postal services, bin collections, utilities, council and civil services, and countless others - and of the fact those workers who society most relies upon are usually also the lowest paid.

However, as we explained back on 1st April, it’s not just ‘Time £2 Pay All Key Workers’ (to quote the STUC) but this needs to be underpinned by a legally enforced National Minimum Wage of at least £12-an-hour from the age of 16 upwards, if we are to avoid further divisions between different low-paid workers, and overcome the rampant poverty which also undermines job security - because workers cannot afford to buy the goods or services produced by other workers.


Workers’ Solidarity and Socialism – not ‘Social Partnership’ With the Enemy

Solidarity in action is a critical plank of what’s required in 2021.

Socialists and trade unionists need to challenge and defeat the false and dangerous philosophy which pervades the upper echelons of most trade unions; namely that of ‘Social Partnership’ between union leaders and company chief executives.

The ‘2020 vision’ of capitalism revealed to millions of people surely exposes the idea of common interests between the very rich and the rest of us, the employers and the working class, as a preposterous, dangerous nonsense.

It took courageous struggle - including strike action in many cases, and even a preparedness by union shop stewards to put their job on the line - to even win adequate sick pay or Personal Protective Equipment from employers who put privatised profit before people’s lives.

And the Tories have gone from hypocritical claps to slaps in the face for key workers, as they prepare to pick the pockets of the very people they proclaimed heroes when it suited the government to get them to work in the jaws of death.

Collective action, good old-fashioned working-class solidarity applied to the modern age, is what’s required, not cosying up to company bosses who would cut your throat as quick as they'd look at you in defence of their profit margins.


Workers Need Socialist Party – join the SSP

Going beyond that, one of the clearest lessons of the past year is that in order to end the rule of the rich in a society based on class division and class exploitation, workers need a conscious socialist party rooted in the workplaces and communities.

A workers’party with a socialist vision and ideology - turned into fighting socialist policies capable of mobilising masses of people because they are expressed in the language and needs of the working class.

The SSP enters 2021 determined to help build a socialist force in the unions, workplaces and communities that can link immediate battles over jobs, wages and rights at work with the need to take the likes of energy, construction, transport, all public services and banks into democratic public ownership. As the foundation for a Socialist Green Recovery Plan which could build 100,000 eco-friendly homes; establish an integrated, free public transport network; provide cheap green energy to all; construct universal basic services fit for the 21st century; thereby also creating at least 150,000 well-paid, unionised jobs and apprenticeships, guaranteeing meaningful work and security to the next generation in a socialist Scotland.

Look back in anger at capitalist 2020, but look forward with determination to shape a socialist future in the 2020s.


Join the SSP (scottishsocialistparty.org)

 

 

 

 

 



Wednesday, 23 September 2020

DEMAND FULL AVERAGE WAGES FOR ALL SICK WORKERS!


Throughout the pandemic I have argued, both as a socialist and elected trade union convenor, for full average wages for anyone sick or in self-isolation from COVID-19.

My concern, particularly amidst the worst killer pandemic in a century, was that some workers dumped onto £95-a-week Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) would confront the impossible choice of financial ruin or dragging themselves into work, spreading the virus, sickness, even death.

Even where unions have conquered some form of occupational sickness benefit, it is frequently less than normal wages, accumulates sick absence penalty points, and excludes workers from a single penny company sick benefit if their absence points are too high.

And right across the board, employers are busily hacking away at occupational sick benefits, under cover of the Coronavirus crisis. That includes companies whose profits rocket beyond £millions to £billions. 

With household debts at record highs, savings at record lows, and job insecurity looming like a train charging down the track towards millions of workers, they are stressed to breaking point, but have nothing to fall back on; work makes many sick, but they can’t afford to take time off to recover. 

A new volcano of both physical and mental ill-health is set to explode, after months of home-working, cramped housing, and social isolation.

Sickness Unaffordable 

Mine might be the first case of a shop steward in Scotland losing his/her job in a dispute with an employer over workers’ health and safety during the Coronavirus, but it throws a harsh spotlight on the broader, deeper crime in society: sick workers can’t afford to be sick – and that makes them even sicker!

Sick pay in the UK is not only a national, but an international scandal.

Statutory Sick Pay of £95.85 a week is appallingly miserly even by the inadequate standards of Britain’s capitalist competitors.

The European average equivalent is £245 a week.

A worker taken sick in this country is only guaranteed 20% of average wages, whereas across Europe it’s 65%. 

Belgium guarantees sick workers their full salary for 30 days. Germany pays their full salary for 6 weeks and 70% of a worker’s wage for the remainder of sick leave. Norway pays up to 52 weeks full salary if a worker has a long-term illness.

Britain is the worst in the whole of Europe, with the single exception of Malta.

Sick Pay Exclusion Zones 

And it gets worse. The word ‘statutory’ implies everybody is guaranteed that amount. Far from it!

Anyone on less than the Lower Earnings Threshold of £120 a week is disqualified from SSP.  That constitutes a mass army of 1.8 to 2 million workers excluded from even that derisory £95. 

That includes a third of all those on zero-hour contracts; one in 10 women workers; 20% of 16-24-year olds; and over a quarter of those working beyond the age of 65 - in part because of the pathetic state pension.

The UK is one of only four countries which totally excludes the self-employed; a growing proportion of workers. 

And most migrant workers are excluded from even this paltry benefit, relying on literally zero income if they fall sick; many hired by the most unscrupulous profiteers, who habitually ignore health and safety regulations, let alone offer any kind of company sick benefit. 

Britain truly is the sick man of Europe, making working class men and women sick, but depriving them of adequate sick pay.

Greencore Northampton - lack of union makes you sick! 

Fatal Consequences 

The consequences are horrendous at the best of times, but fatal during the pandemic.

A new rash of COVID-19 clusters has erupted in poultry and meat plants, sweatshop garment factories, and at several food production workplaces.

Greencore, who produce Marks and Spencer’s sandwiches, have been at the heart of a scandal at their Northampton branch where 324 of its 834-workforce tested positive for COVID-19.

As Sarah Woolley, the new general secretary of the Bakers union (BFAWU) explained at a recent online rally I was invited to speak at - alongside other workers, Sarah and John McDonnell MP - it’s significant Greencore’s Northampton branch does not recognise the Union. They refused to close as cases multiplied, ignoring workers' concerns. 

When the government eventually forced temporary closure, self-isolating workers were expected to exist on £95. As Sarah explained, many were forced to use food banks, and with many multiple family members working there, entire household incomes vanished overnight. “Hearing people who work for a company that makes £55million in pure profit talking about how their income dropped from £240 to £95 is just horrific. How the hell are they supposed to pay the bills?”

Throughout the lockdown we warned Scotland's care homes were incubators for COVID-19. In part, due to decades of refusal to invest in NHS staff and equipment leading to 1,200 elderly patients being transferred out of hospital wards into care homes to clear bed space, without being tested, or worse still, despite testing positive.

This criminal carnage was added to by care home workers, almost universally denied any occupational sick benefit, being terrified of self-isolating, with their already-low incomes slashed to £95 SSP. 


Bakers' Union at TUC 

The Bakers’ Union initiated a Motion at the TUC congress calling for full wages for sick workers for 6 weeks, paid directly by the employer, and increased Statutory Sick Pay thereafter. 

Alongside the struggle for a vastly enhanced minimum wage for all over 16 - at least £12 an hour - the battle for full 100% average wages for all sick workers - whether with COVID-19 or anything else - is critical. Central to a future that puts workers’ health and lives miles ahead of the wealth and privileges of profiteering capitalist employers and their hired enforcers in the boardrooms and senior management. 

Workers' Control of H&S 

The lived experiences of millions during the pandemic has also reinforced the urgency of the Scottish Socialist Party's demand for workers’ control of health and safety, through elected committees of union health and safety reps and shop stewards.

Many of the hazards at work, physical and mental, could be removed and prevented by workers’ representatives whose everyday experiences put them far more in tune with workplace risks than the depleted, downgraded Health and Safety Executive Inspectors, whose numbers have been halved. And who are now to be replaced by undertrained substitutes, with less powers, from privatised outsourcing companies. 

No wonder only 38% of workers reported in this week's BritainThinks Survey that their employers carried out a COVID-secure risk assessment, and only a similar 42% have been given adequate PPE.

A system run for private profit will always cast workers' health to the back of the queue, and when capitalist profiteering triggers illness through stress, insecurity, poverty and shoddy safety standards, sick workers are tossed aside like squeezed lemons. 

The potential power of the organised trade union movement needs to be urgently mobilised to put workers’ health before capitalists' wealth. 

Full, 100% average wages for all sick workers, and control of workplace safety by elected union representatives, are two of the measures which must be pursued by our side with the same determination as bosses chase after shortcuts to profit. 

Workers’ lives before profit must be turned from a phrase into a fight. 

..........................


This blog has also been published in the online Scottish Socialist Voice

I would encourage you to take out a subscription for this excellent fortnightly online publication, which covers key issues at home and abroad from a working class and socialist perspective. 

For only £10 you get 12 separate issues directly to your email Inbox. 

The link to subscribe is:  https://socialistvoice.scot/subscriptions/




Saturday, 22 August 2020

IMAGINE HOW TO FIGHT THE SLAUGHTER OF JOBS & WAGES!


We’re All In This Together” declares the signage in one famous supermarket.

Far from it! The household name displaying those posters, Marks and Spencer’s, have just announced another tranche of job losses, tossing 7,000 workers onto the growing scrapheap of mass unemployment. 

Workers are being made to pay a heavy price for the Coronavirus. 

The government and capitalist employers are making us pay with job losses, pay cuts, slashed conditions, intensified exploitation, the massacre of sick benefits and, yes, loss of lives. 

Years of failure to invest - and consciously planned poverty pay – contributes to the slaughter of the innocents during this pandemic.

Care Home Carnage 

Decades of austerity left the NHS prone to being overrun when COVID-19 hit these shores, so both the Tory government and the SNP Scottish government prioritised clearance of bed spaces in our hospitals over securing the safety of elderly patients thrown into residential care homes.

Freedom of Information investigations have revealed at least 1,200 elderly patients in Scotland were transferred from hospital wards into care homes without being tested for COVID-19. And that is a gross underestimate, because five of Scotland’s health boards, including the two largest, refused to answer.  

Worse still, the same investigations revealed many others thrown in amongst the most vulnerable elderly population at the height of a pandemic had been tested positive in the hospital.

As professor Allyson Pollock commented “This was like throwing a lighted match into a tinderbox.”

This austerity-rooted regime helped trigger the care home carnage that accounts for half of all COVID-19 deaths.

Workplace Infection and Death 

As we repeatedly warned and denounced in recent months, whilst the governments told us to stay at home they also told us to get to work. They were driven by their preoccupation with upholding the profit margins of the profiteering rich.

The Health and Safety Executive this week reported 600 people in Scotland have caught the virus in their place of work, nearly two-thirds of them in care homes.

As the STUC points out, that figure is only the tip of a vastly larger iceberg. Especially given the notoriety of sectors that employ many of the lowest paid for not reporting accidents at work let alone infection with the killer virus. 

Now a new virus is sweeping the country, demolishing jobs, wages and family livelihoods.

Whilst their capitalist competitors in Germany have extended the wage subsidy furlough scheme for a period of 2 years, to mitigate redundancies, the short-sighted get-rich-quick brigade in charge of capitalist Britain are cutting off the life support machine of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, triggering mass redundancies. 

Those of us who remember Maggie Thatcher’s Dark Ages in the 1980s are suffering deja-vu; TV news back then always ended with a massive list of redundancies and closures, in part designed to browbeat workers into thinking job losses were an unstoppable force of nature.

In recent weeks, thousands of job losses have been announced daily: Boots, John Lewis, M&S, Debenhams, hospitality, airlines and even the public sector.


Fire and Rehire 

This relentless slaughter of jobs is not always purely based on companies suffering the economic impact of the pandemic.

It’s often something previously planned, but now implemented with maniacal zeal by company bosses under cover of Coronavirus, in a race to the bottom, making workers pay the price for sustained profiteering.

British Airways’ “fire and rehire” tactic is the best known of these assaults on workers with the excuse of COVID-19. An extremely profitable company grabbed public funds to furlough staff, but still fired all 42,000 and then bullied and blackmailed 30,000 of them into accepting wage cuts of 50-60% - or else join the 12,000 chucked out the door. 

Centrica Cowboys 

Centrica is not far behind BA in these criminal methods.

As one of their workers explained to me, 

At the moment we get six months full pay for sick absence. Centrica want to abolish that entirely unless we opt into a taxable private health scheme. If we do that, 13 weeks will be on full pay and the next 9 months on two-thirds of pay. Otherwise if we refuse to opt into private health we're meant to survive on nothing but £95 a week Statutory Sick Pay. And it's even worse for those of us with less than 2-years service; just 10 weeks full pay if we go into private health, the rest on £95 SSP.

For the industrial staff, Centrica plan to increase contracts from a 37 hour week to 40, with no uplift in pay. So they want 3 hours a week free labour. Office staff are expected to gift them half-an-hour a week free of wages, with worsened opening hours. 

And the overtime rate is to be slashed from time and a half to single time, with a cap of 25 hours a year.

Centrica call centres seem to be the new Victorian mills.”


Pockets of Resistance  

Thankfully, pockets of resistance by workers to the slaughter of their jobs and theft of their wages is beginning to erupt, but urgently requires coordination and leadership from the wider trade union movement.

GMB union members in Centrica have voted by a whopping 95% for strike action, in a 68% turnout.

British Airways workers - cabin crew, baggage and loading staff alike - are poised to vote on taking strike action. 

Healthcare workers have got together and staged a series of marvellous rallies demanding pay justice and pay equality, many of them pushing for a 15% pay rise, after being slapped in the face by the government when they were excluded from the all-too-miserly public sector pay rise - after having put their lives on the line, face-to-face with COVID-19. 

Many other workers are furious at attacks on conditions, including sick pay entitlements, which is particularly outrageous and dangerous when COVID-19 has hit chicken factories, meat plants, textile factories and other workplaces.

For example, one multi-billioned retail giant has gone from stopping wages to workers with COVID-19 to slashing company sick benefit entirely after 3 days’ absence per year. 

Precisely those workers with underlying health problems, and therefore most vulnerable to the ongoing Coronavirus, are the same people most likely to be disqualified from anything more than £95 Statutory Sick Pay, because ill health has forced them off work for periods. 

Stark Choices 

Workers face harsh, stark choices, thrown into high relief by the Coronavirus and its economic consequences.

The road being travelled not just by the Tories but also the Scottish government involves mass redundancies as the subsidies to big business dry up, and the massacre of pay and sick pay. Which not only further endangers lives by dragging people into work despite being infected, but also blows to smithereens the previous nonsense talked by governments and some economists about a rapid V-shaped recovery.

With household savings at an all-time low, household debts at an all-time high, and wages being crushed down even further as a share of national wealth - in order to enhance the share that goes in profit - the consumer-led boom, which capitalist Britain and Scotland has been far too reliant on, has now turned into its opposite.

Far from being “all in this together”, the Corona crisis has highlighted the gaping chasm between the classes in this system of running society. 

Britain’s 45 billionaires increased their personal wealth by 20% in the months of March and April alone.

In neat, grotesque contrast, the average NHS worker has suffered at 20% pay cut since 2010.

Two-thirds of all care home staff are thinking of leaving their low-paid, insecure and dangerous jobs, in a new survey by the GMB.


Fighting Socialist Alternatives 

So what’s the alternative to this tsunami of job losses, pay cuts and life-threatening attacks on sick pay?

Scotland’s trade union movement embraces nearly 650,000 workers - and could recruit as many more if they demonstrated an iron determination to fight for immediate improvements in working conditions and organised action that would remove the fear factor that dominates the minds of many workers.

At the height of the pandemic the STUC and its affiliated unions called for an immediate £2-an-hour wage increase for all key workers.

That should not wither on the vine and become just an empty rhetorical flourish.

Turned into serious campaigning and collective action, it could be one part of unified demands for better wages across the board, underpinned by an absolute minimum, legally enforced wage of £12-an-hour for all at 16.

Such improved wages will transform the lives of hundreds of thousands and radically improve workers’ spending power, which in turn would make jobs far more secure in sectors such as retail, hospitality, tourism and entertainment. 


Minimum 16-Hour Week 

At the 2019 STUC annual conference, I proposed my union USDAW’s policy motion for abolition of all zero hours contracts and other forms of insecure, casualised labour, to be replaced by a guaranteed minimum 16-hour week for every worker who wants it. 

That pioneering policy was passed at the STUC without a single vote against. It now needs to be turned into a major plank of the trade union movement's alternative to low wages, rampant job insecurity, and the vicious spiral of job losses they both contribute to.

We live in a society where capitalist ownership of the core economy leads to monstrous levels of work-related stress, as the profiteers strive for greater output by fewer workers on lesser wages.

An epidemic of mental ill health has already been stored up and is now added to by the lockdown - and indeed new forms of physical and mental illness created by working from home.

Capitalism is a system which by its very nature puts profit before people; the health of bosses’ wallets before the health and wellbeing of the working class who produce society's wealth. 

100% Wages for Sick Workers 

An increasingly critical issue for the massed ranks of the trade union movement to struggle for is sick pay equivalent to 100% average wages, instead of the pathetic £95-a-week Statutory Sick Pay and the rapid obliteration of company sick benefit schemes currently being witnessed.

That one measure could have prevented countless COVID-19 deaths by removing the financial pressure to go to work despite carrying the virus, thereby infecting others.

The Tories have severed the lifeline of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme despite the fact the deadly disease is still here and still as lethal.

They've thrown the sop of £1,000 grant for every worker not made redundant.

Plenty of big businesses will pocket that publicly funded grant to the benefit of their profit-and-loss accounts.


Means Tests for the Rich! 

The trade union movement should demand means tests for businesses, instead of the humiliating means tests to which the poorest people are subjected.

Let’s examine the secret accounts of every business. Where a small enterprise, doing useful work in safe conditions, genuinely cannot afford a minimum wage of £12-an-hour and retention of all staff, they should be granted state funds or loans to save jobs and pay decent wages.

No such largesse can be justified for big businesses, whose profits are measured in £millions or £billions. 

If they announce job losses or closures and they are involved in socially useful production or services, the unions should mobilise action for measures like a 4-day week on 5 days’ pay - and the takeover of their assets and operations by the government or local authorities, in order to sustain jobs and their workers’ contribution to the economy for the benefit of society.

4-Day Week on 5 Days' Pay 

Even the capitalist government of Germany is contemplating a 4-day week, after the giant 2.3 million-strong IG Metall union called for a 30-hour week to save jobs. 

We face a crossroads. What kind of economy, what kind of work and what kind of society do we want for the 21st century?

Vast areas of human life require work to be done, yet the system we live under means the optimists around the Bank of England predict 2.5 million unemployed by Christmas, whilst the economic pessimists warn of about 4 million, including one in every three young people.

Such waste of talent, energy and skills, and the attendant misery and poverty of mass unemployment, is a searing condemnation of a capitalist economy founded on the profit motive.

School leavers should be guaranteed either an apprenticeship on at least a £12 minimum wage, free further education with a living student grant, or a decent, meaningful, unionized job.

Society is screaming out for adequate numbers of highly trained workers in areas as varied as the NHS; social care; mental health services; education; council services; environmental improvements; house building and retrofitting; vastly expanded public transport; production and distribution of clean green energy and all the equipment that goes with it. 


150,000 Green Jobs 

The potential for a vast green jobs plan was illustrated in the recent STUC report showing where 150,000 new, green jobs could be created in Scotland.

But instead of fulfilling the verbal flourishes of “Scotland becoming the Saudi Arabia of renewables”, as declared in the past by Alex Salmond, the SNP government has utterly failed to challenge the system whereby growth in wind farms and other green energy projects has almost entirely bypassed any job creation in Scotland itself.

Instead, they preside over the obscene absurdity of wind farm construction and decommissioning of North Sea oil and gas installations being carried out abroad, as far afield as cheap labour Bangladesh and Indonesia, while fabrication yards and other facilities a few miles inshore lie idle. For example the BiFab yards in Fife and Lewis. 

Rubbing salt into the wounds of a country facing mass unemployment, the new Viking onshore wind farm on Shetland, the biggest of its kind in the UK, is now to be built and operated by the Danish Vestas company.

At least 400 initial construction jobs are therefore in the hands of an overseas profiteer, rather than being part of a Scottish public sector energy corporation which could provide tens of thousands of well-paid jobs, and apprenticeships for young people, giving them purpose, dignity and a secure future.

Why should the Scottish government leave the fate of Scottish workers in the hands of Vestas, the same company which in 2009 declared mass redundancies at its factory in Newport, Isle of Wight, leading to a factory occupation by the workforce, which the SSP built solidarity for in Scotland, as those workers rightly demanded nationalisation to save jobs? And they were spurned in their demands by the same Labour government of Gordon Brown which previously spoke eloquently of creating 400,000 green jobs. 


Green Socialist Recovery Plan 

Instead of a new 2020 Dark Ages that could make Thatcher's atrocities look mild and more resemble the 1930s, the collective potential power of the trade union movement and socialists needs to be mobilised in pursuit of a Green Socialist Recovery Plan.

Based on public ownership of key sectors like construction, public transport, energy, major industrial enterprises and the banking system, Scotland could lead the way by immediately creating at least 150,000 new green, well-paid jobs with full collective union rights, and workers’ control over health and safety and other day-to-day decisions.

Imagine what such a planned socialist recovery programme could mean for the construction of 100,000 social sector houses, built to the highest environmental standards, with varieties of stock guaranteeing gardens or other outdoor spaces for all who want it.

Imagine how household energy bills, which have rocketed during the lockdown, could be slashed through retrofitting and insulating existing housing stock, and removing the profit margin in a publicly owned energy sector.

Imagine the scale of green re-industrialisation Scotland’s shipyards and factories (including under-threat Dennis buses) could enjoy in the production of vast new fleets of ferries, buses and trains for a vastly expanded and integrated public transport network - free at the point of use, thereby combating poverty, social isolation and pollution.

Imagine how hundreds of thousands of workers could be liberated from the health-threatening drudgery of 12-hour shifts and more, by employment of new staff in areas of greatest need on a maximum 4-day week. 

Imagine – and Organise 

Workers and their unions need to imagine this and much more, but turn these entirely realistic visions of our collective future into reality by fighting for it.

Truly the choice we face is that posed by Rosa Luxemburg a century ago: socialism or barbarism. 





Thursday, 4 June 2020

WIELD ORGANISED WORKERS' POWER FOR A SOCIALIST RECOVERY PLAN





As Billy Bragg sang, "There is power in a union".

Or at least, enormous potential collective power, provided leadership is given on the right issues.

Tens of thousands of workers have awoken to that in recent times, with a significant upsurge in trade union membership.

Surge in Union Membership


During 2019, 90,000 workers joined a union; that's over 200,000 new recruits in two years.

The biggest increase has been amongst women workers, who now constitute 3.6 million in the UK, the highest figure since 1995.

In Scotland,15,500 joined a union last year.

Of course, to keep perspective, that still leaves only 23.5% of workers unionised, with even lower density in the private sector and amongst those aged under 35. Less than a quarter of trade unionists are under 35, whereas 40% of them are aged over 50.

Likewise, we've had several successive years of very low strike figures, and therefore low profile for collective action and the advantages of trade unionism for younger generations to observe and absorb.

That is the result of a cocktail of factors.

The most repressive anti-union laws in the western world - introduced by the Tories, sustained by Labour governments. A regime of fear, wielded by senior management buoyed up by this battery of anti-worker legislation. And all too frequently, weak, compromising leadership from the top of the unions, far too accustomed to cosy relationships with employers and a lifestyle more akin to that of the company chief executives than to the average worker who pays their union subs.


The Times They are A-changin' 


There are moments in history when sharp changes occur.

There is a tendency throughout history for workers to seek solutions to their daily privations and problems through collective industrial struggle when no political solutions appear imminent, and vice versa.

To take random examples: the 1880s were marked by a monumental surge into the unions by the most downtrodden, lowpaid, so-called unskilled workers,  previously neglected by craft-based trade unions, when they increasingly saw no salvation from the dominant Tory or Liberal politicians.

In turn, that industrial wave helped fuel the birth of independent working class political representation, creating the newborn Labour Party.

In the 1970s, disappointment with the 1964-70 Labour government and savage onslaughts by the 1970-74 Ted Heath Tory regime triggered the biggest modern wave of strike actions, increased union membership, a rise in workplace militancy, and through this showdown between rival class forces led to 1975 being the year with both the highest union membership in Britain and the lowest levels of inequality across society.

That stark statistic in itself is a profound lesson for today's young working class. Indeed 'there is power in a union', and correctly wielded it can not only combat poverty, unsafe working conditions, and bullying by management, but also reduce inequality.






Coronavirus Crisis: a New Turning Point 


The coronavirus crisis is poised to be a new turning point in trade union and working class history.

The experience of millions in recent months has taught many profound lessons.

It's demonstrated the simple fact but there's such a thing as a working class, an idea previously sneered at by the commentariat, including some self-styled lefts and socialists.

It's shown in action that the people essential to society's functioning, to the very existence of human life, are workers of multiple and varied occupations, and certainly not the remote, grotesquely overpaid company chief executives and directors or financial speculators.

More pertinent still have been the lived experiences and visible displays of the role of trade unionists in fighting for measures to save lives in the teeth of the deadly virus, often in conflict with employers and indeed governments slow or unwilling to put people before profit.

It took relentless pushing and demanding by workplace shop stewards and the best national union officials to eventually win basics like hand sanitizers, cleaning equipment, protective screens and of course PPE for the millions of workers who have sustained life and society throughout the crisis.


Unsung Heroes on the Frontline of Trade Unionism


The unsung heroes of these times, whom the Tories would never applaud on a Thursday night, are thousands of workplace union representatives who have fought for the safety of fellow workers. Often under intense pressure from senior management, and sometimes under threat of victimisation for daring to demand measures like shutdown of non-essential workplaces, with 100% pay; protection of workers' holidays; and rigorous Risk Assessments with the full participation of union health and safety reps, to help prevent a second spike in COVID-19 deaths as the lockdown eases.

It is the determined action of these unsung heroes, and the lobbying by national unions, which forced the government into the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.

Observing this collective effort, thousands of new workers have joined unions in the past three months.

That is the experience of most major unions.

Unison have reported 65,000 new recruits since January. The National Education Union (NEU), engaged in frontline battles in England over premature reopening of schools, has had over 20,000 recent recruits.

Previously scattered, unorganised and heavily exploited sectors, such as fast food and hospitality, have also begun to unionise, with some spectacular localised success stories in reversing employers' plans to make thousands redundant, gaining furlough with at least 80% pay instead.



A Dangerous Phase for Workers' Health 


Currently we are living through potentially the most dangerous phase of the whole crisis, where UK and Scottish governments are to varying degrees declaring against mass outdoor gatherings, but encourageing or insisting upon mass indoor gatherings - by reopening non-essential workplaces, to revive production and sales for flagging profits.

The newly enhanced profile of the trade union movement - not seen for at least a generation - needs to be organised at both national and workplace levels to insist on proper safety measures, alongside a fully-funded and staffed regime of mass testing, tracing and isolation.

This moment should be seized to push for workers' control of workplace health and safety, through elected union reps.


The Capitalist Virus of Mass Unemployment 


The other virus about to sweep the country, rooted in capitalist production methods just as much as the coronavirus, is mass redundancies and unemployment.

Millions of jobs are on life support through the taxpayer-funded Job Retention Scheme.

Around 8 million workers were at least temporarily kept in a job, albeit with 10% or 20% pay cuts in many cases, through this state subsidy of businesses.

As that scheme tapers off, the greed-driven employing class are frequently poised to slash thousands of jobs and family livelihoods.

Daily announcements by the likes of British Airways, Rolls Royce, retail and hospitality firms are a deafening wake-up call to the devastation facing the working class in the months ahead.

The unions need to rise to the challenge, not only by consciously involving members and wielding the collective 'power in a union', but also by advancing concrete fighting alternatives to this capitalist blitzkrieg.

We cannot tolerate a re-run of the devastation visited upon the working class in the wake of the 2008 bankers' crisis; a lost decade of savage pay cuts, job losses and punishment of workers for a crisis they never created.



For a 4-day Week on 5 Days' Pay 


The unions have the potential power to spearhead an alternative Socialist Recovery Plan.

That could start with the immediate demand to share out the available work through a shorter working week, but critically, without loss of earnings.

The demand, for instance, for a 4-day week on 5 days' pay would evoke massive sympathy amongst workers who have either been enduring regular 12-hour shifts during the pandemic, or gained a taste of other things in life outside the drudgery of long hours at work.

That one measure could create and save tens of thousands of Scottish jobs.


Socialist Green New Deal 


A Socialist Green New Deal built on the foundations of public ownership of key sectors such as construction, transport, energy and banking must become the clarion cry of the organised labour movement.

A recent STUC study shows the massive potential for job creation in such a scheme.

Analysis by Transition Economics - in part based on information from post-2008 investment schemes in other countries - gives precise figures of potential job creation in 23 different clean infrastructure projects in Scotland.

Overall, they demonstrate that £13billion investment in a two-year infrastructure recovery plan could create 150,000 jobs immediately.

Examples of the schemes they cite include expansion of the rail network (including for freight) with 13,700 new jobs.

Other clean, green investments include construction of cycle lanes and pedestrianisation (nearly 18,000 jobs); low income residential retrofit programme (34,000); residential retrofit programme (over 14,000 jobs); and upgrade of ports and shipyards for offshore wind supplies (almost 6000 jobs).


Wield the Power of Organised Workers 


Socialists and trade unionists need to agitate and seek to organise the collective power of the trade union movement to demand precisely such an emergency green re-industrialization plan. It will require the social, class power of the organised workers' movement to translate fine ideas on paper into living reality.

The catastrophic impact of deindustrialization over the past 40 years led to a lack of equipment for hospitals, an inability to rapidly produce such equipment, which in turn meant both the UK and Scottish governments initially resorted to the obscenity of 'herd immunity', and then an emphasis on stopping our hospitals being overrun. Leading to such tragedies as over 1,000 elderly patients in Scotland being emptied out of hospitals into care homes without being tested, and the carnage that followed.

Housing, Public Transport, Jobs 


The housing crisis has been highlighted during the pandemic, with the huge differential between the experience of those in cramped or substandard housing during the lockdown, and people even with a decent house and modest garden.

In addition to the plans detailed in the STUC study, an emergency social sector house-building plan - with a variety of types of homes for rent according to demand, including gardens for all who want one - would solve both a housing crisis and the desperate need for decent, well-paid, skilled jobs and apprenticeships.

As people return to work, the problem of ensuring social distancing on public transport serves to underline the case for democratic public ownership of all public transport and massive investment in fleets of buses, trains and ferries. Both to accommodate safe travelling and prevent a return to the appalling pollution caused by massive reliance on cars, which the lockdown has given temporary respite from, and given millions a glimpse of how better life could be if freed of both pollution and poverty.




Invest in NHS and a National Care Service 


There are plenty of other immediate areas requiring huge state investment. Not investment of public money to boost the private profits of capitalist enterprises, but public sector investment accompanied by democratic public ownership and working class control. With massive job opportunities created.

Two of many such areas are the NHS and a public National Care Service, to cut out the profiteering that kills elderly people. To instead construct a care service free at the point of need, with decent wages, conditions, and training for a vastly expanded workforce that is guaranteed collective union bargaining rights.

Underpinning this socialist recovery plan is a vast redistribution of wealth from the remote, grotesquely privileged capitalist elite to the working class, who have been seen with renewed clarity to provide life's daily essentials and all that makes for a civilised existence.

Not only those rightly classified as 'essential workers' during the pandemic, but every worker, needs to be guaranteed a £12 minimum wage rising with inflation - rather than another lost decade of pay cuts and reduced spending power, which in itself further undermines job security.


Battle Commences for a New Future 


COVID-19 throws up a profound challenge on what kind of future we want.

Nothing is predetermined in history. The future will be decided by a clash between rival living forces.

On one side the capitalists, bankers, landlords and their hired politicians, who want to return to the old abnormal, the inhumane pursuit of profit at terrible cost to peoples' lives and the planet we live on.

On the other side, the growing forces of an organised working class, who need to feel a renewed self-confidence and demand a Socialist Recovery Plan that rejects the obscenity of production for profit, and builds on the values of human solidarity touchingly displayed in thousands of small incidents during the Covid crisis.

Join the battle!




Saturday, 9 May 2020

TORY LOCKDOWN CHAOS: NO RETURN UNTIL IT'S SAFE!




A dangerous dance is being choreographed between big business, Boris Johnson’s government and the millionaire media.


Capitalists desperate to revive their production and sales for profit are relentlessly lobbying the government, who lend them a kindly ear.

Johnson plays on people’s frustrations, poverty and fears by pledging an ‘unlockdown’ plan from Monday 11th May.

The media goes into paroxysms of celebration for VE Day with headlines such as “Hurrah! Lockdown Freedom Beckons” (Daily Mail); “Four Steps to Freedom from Monday” (Daily Express).

Inciting a Stampede Back to Profit-making 


All this is designed to stampede workers in non-essential sectors back to work in a fashion that could endanger a malignant new surge in the pandemic and the slaughter of many more on top of the 30,000 already officially dead through COVID-19.



In the rush to revive profiteering on behalf of the class they represent, Johnson's government drafted guidelines on a return to work which only gave the trade unions 12 hours to comment.

And no wonder they were reluctant to consult when you look at the contents!

The documents speak of ‘asking employers to consider’ measures such as social distancing between workers and hand-washing that should ‘happen where possible’. 

Not one hint of anything being legally binding, of being statutory requirements on employers. 

Ending Safety Precautions in Work


In shocking contradiction of the two-metre rule we've all become so familiar with, the proposed conditions for a return to work even suggest that where it is not possible to keep workers 2m apart “Perhaps”, to quote Ben Wallace, Defence Secretary, “you could be closer than two metres but not for long”. 


They speak of reduced hot-desking, not its elimination.

There are no guarantees of protection for older or vulnerable or pregnant workers. In fact, it gets worse: the documents state that where working from home is not possible for these groups, “they should be put in the safest possible roles inside the workplace.”

They speak of a limit to the numbers in a vehicle - but put no figure on how many is a safe limit. 


A building site canteen during C-19: workers bullied into work 


PPE Not Even Mentioned!


In a shocking display of callous indifference towards the lives of working people, at the very time when the failure to provide PPE has helped Britain to become the worst country in Europe for deaths, the government documents do not even mention PPE. They merely state details will follow.

Indeed, government documents speak of guidance “to ensure staff can be made to feel sufficiently reassured safe working practises without the provision of PPE.” 


Several other issues immediately arise.

What steps will they put in place to make travel to work on public transport safer? None so far.

We shouldn't hold our breath on that one, because even prior to these leaked documents the combined rail-workers’ unions were at loggerheads with transport employers hell-bent on dragging workers back to greatly increased transport services on 18 May. That for, example, was the intention of London Underground bosses, one of the worst potential breeding grounds from mass infection.



Likewise, Johnson's government says nothing about what will happen to workers who are parents with childcare problems, or who are carers for people being shielded from the disease. Will they be allowed to remain on furlough under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme? Or will they be dragged back to work, to create bigger dividends for the giant shareholders, regardless of the impact on life and family? 

Worse Than Current Safety Laws


The TUC rightly responded by condemning the lack of consultation with unions and in a letter to the government stated:

“If the guidelines are not significantly strengthened, safe working will not be guaranteed and unions would have no hesitation in saying so publicly and to our members”. 

The TUC also point out these guidelines are weaker than existing Health and Safety legislation.

For instance, they make no reference to an obligation on employers to produce and publish a Risk Assessment, with input from union Health and Safety reps.



The essence of the government approach is to let the employers decide what is safe on issues such as social distancing, cleaning regimes and use of PPE.

Nothing is binding on employers; they are merely ‘asked to consider’ and to ‘look at what is possible’.

That is a charter for hair-raising neglect towards workers’ health and very lives, in the rush to restart the likes of building sites, manufacturing and non-food retail; with the aim of dragging thousands of customers desperate to shop after the lockdown into environments which could trigger a new peak of infection and death.



Why should working people trust a government or employers who have demonstrably failed to even produce hand gels on a timely basis in the earlier phase of the pandemic?

And who have patently failed to provide proper, appropriate PPE to workers thrown into the jaws of disease and potential death in care homes, hospitals and other frontline, emergency services? 

Rail-workers' unions battling bosses' premature revival of train services


Unions Won Concessions


It took union lobbying, relentless pressure by shop stewards, and in many cases strike action by workers, to enforce even minimal hygiene measures on many of the same employers who now want to reopen for business as usual.



Likewise it was the pressure of the trade union movement which helped to win the furlough system with 80% wages paid from the public purse, and in numerous cases enforced the reinstatement of workers who had been prematurely and callously made redundant by those employers. 

Trade union demands, and sometimes collective strike action, were required to achieve the closure of non-essential workplaces.

But throughout the so-called lockdown, the government has been deliberately ambiguous on what is essential and non-essential. For example, after plenty of lobbying by big businesses involved in such sectors, they announced that online delivery operations in non-food retail was not only acceptable but to be encouraged. In turn, the same employers hid behind the excuse, the weasel words, “we are following government guidelines” to bring workers into warehouses and delivery fleets despite the risks that inevitably puts those workers and their households at. 

Tories split on speed of ending lockdown - divided on profiteering tactics


Tory Blackmail


In recent weeks the government has deployed the weaponry of the mass media to blackmail workers currently on furlough, and to try to incite other workers against them, with tales of Armageddon at the cost of the Job Retention Scheme.

In fact, with 6.3 million workers on that scheme at a cost of £8billion so far, that's barely a drop in the bucket compared with the £330billion pledged in big business bailouts, in the form of government bank-loan guarantees and other schemes.

A classic case of bailing out the billionaires, but not the workers who made their £billions. 

Whilst the Tory Cabinet appear split on the speed of ending the lockdown, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has led the battle-cry for scaling down or even scrapping the Job Retention Scheme. They're considering options such as reducing it from 80% to 60% or even 50% of wages, or applying it to just part of a worker’s weekly hours. 

Dancing with Death


No worker wants to remain stuck at home indefinitely, particularly when it means pay cuts of 10%, 20% or - if these plans transpire - potentially 50%.

But at a time when the daily death toll is still heart-breaking, and when employers in care homes, hospitals and bus services are amongst those who cannot organise the protection of workers from the deadly virus, this carefully choreographed incitement to reopening of the economy is not only premature, but a dance with Death.



The unions, including the TUC and STUC, need to assist every union rep and every member in resisting a premature return to work to unsafe workplaces.

Workers’ health and lives comes before the profit needs of big business - who in any case are being given state handouts to subsidise their profits. 

Nobody should be obliged to return to work until a thorough Risk Assessment has been conducted and published, with the full involvement of union Health and Safety experts – prior to it opening, not afterwards.

Risk Assessments Before Any Re-opening - for workers' control of safety


Fighting for Safety Measures


Basic measures should include deep cleans of workplaces; stringent plans and regulations about increased cleaning routines; strict adherence to social distancing between workers; shields; face masks and visors; proper hygiene, cleaning and washing facilities.

They should all be legally binding rather than an optional extra, to be ‘considered where possible’ by employers.

Transport unions should be fully involved in comprehensive plans to make public transport safe.

Workers in vulnerable health categories or with childcare needs or care duties should be offered the continued protection of the Job Retention Scheme – on full pay, not 80%, 60% or 50%. 

Test, Trace, Isolate - First


In its broader context safety at work also requires mass testing, contact tracing, and proper isolation.

But how can we have any confidence that it's safe to return to non-essential work when the Tory government’s targeted 100,000 tests a day was achieved for one day on the basis of a fraud  - counting tests sent to people but never returned - only to be followed by four successive days drastically below that figure (69,000 on 6 May)?

Nor has the Scottish Government demonstrated that mass testing is in operation. In fact their 3,500 daily target only equates to one-third of the Tories’ 100,000, per capita. Thankfully, at least as we write this, they seem more susceptible than the boorish Boris to demands from the unions for retention of the lockdown until it’s safe to ease it.

Workers’ Control of Safety


This whole grotesque attempt to put the health of big business balance-sheets ahead of the health or even lives of workers highlights the urgent need to strengthen trade unions, and demand workers’ control over health and safety in the workplace, through elected union shop stewards and health and safety reps.

In the short term, if workplaces are not demonstrably safe in the eyes of the appropriate unions, national unions need to give a lead to the membership and refuse to return to work until they are safe.

On paper, the 1996 Employment Rights Act (Regulations 44 & 100) gives workers the right to refuse to work in an unsafe environment, without victimisation or loss of pay.

That statutory right cannot be implemented by isolated individual workers - but should be applied with determination through the collective organisation of the trade union movement.


Put workers' lives first and last. Put people before profit. No return to work until it’s safe.