Boris Johnson cynically stands on the front steps of 10 Downing Street clapping
for NHS staff and other key workers, hailing them as heroes.
Next thing, he imposes a public sector pay freeze and derisory 1% pay offer to the hospital workers who saved his life.
It's gone from two-faced claps to a slap in the face. From being called heroes to being treated as zeros.
Meantime round at the back door of number 10, every Tuesday for the past year, giant hampers of gourmet food - from what has been dubbed 'the poshest organic farm shop in Britain' - is smuggled in for Boris and his partner, Carrie.
Nurses, and the very workers who produce, distribute and sell food in supermarkets, are amongst those forced to swallow their pride and turn to food banks.
Johnston doesn't stoop to queuing outside the supermarket in all weathers, or resort to food parcels in desperation to prevent his kids going hungry. No, he's had £7,500 worth of gourmet takeaways and £5,000 of organic food supplies delivered round the back door to try and prevent taxpayers who pay his giant salary noticing.
Feeding the Tories
And as with all things Tory and capitalist, the Johnson household keep the wealth ‘in the family’.
The suppliers of the sumptuous takeaways are Daylesford Farm Shop, owned by Lady Bamford, wife of JCB construction tycoon Lord Bamford, who donated £160,000 to Johnson’s political coffers in 2019 alone - and millions of pounds over the years to the Tory party.
While the Tories set the scene with an insulting 1% offer to NHS workers, they have forked out £37billion of public funds to 22 private companies to run the utterly discredited, failed Test and Trace regime.
A scheme which hires private consultants on £1,000-a-day, and which this week the Westminster Public Accounts Committee condemned as “treating taxpayers like an ATM machine” and scathingly described as “making no measurable difference to infection rates or the spread of the pandemic”.
Covid Crony Capitalism
One of the companies raking in a fortune from this sick profiteering at the cost of avoidable deaths is SERCO, whose chief executive is Winston Churchill's grandson, Rupert Soames.
The latter Tory grandee has just awarded himself £4.9million for 2020, after SERCO's profits almost doubled during the year of the pandemic, and they openly boasted of a £400million boost to their revenues from COVID-19 work. SERCO has been propped up by government handouts for Test and Trace, but also for running Caledonian Sleepers.
From this ill-gotten bounty they handed out £17million in dividends to shareholders last month.
Yet the government tells us they can't afford the 15% pay claim for NHS staff to part-compensate for the 20% real loss of wages over the last decade. Even though it’s been shown that would cost far less, across the whole of the UK, than the £37billion meted out to the Tories' mates in Covid contracts.
It makes your blood boil.
Key Workers Insulted and Underpaid
Supermarket workers certainly don't shop at Daylesford luxury farm shop, because the vast majority of them earn less than £10-an-hour and are mostly on short-hours contracts of 8,10 or 12 hours a week. They risk infection to feed the nation, and have suffered double the level of abuse they did a year ago. Many of them put food on the shelves but cannot afford to put food on their own family tables, turning to food banks.
Cleansing workers face rampant rat infestation in Glasgow, as Scottish government cuts to council funds are passed on by the local administration, slashing bin collections to once every 3 weeks. These workers are certainly not ordering secret hampers of luxury food from Daylesford Farm Shop.
Along with posties trudging through all weathers; utility workers risking their health to repair supplies even in houses with COVID-19 infection; transport workers keeping the show on the road; hordes of frontline local government service workers; Social Care staff who come face to face with the virus in their daily work... all these people help make up the army of 920,000 in Scotland alone who have been officially designated ‘key workers’ by the government.
Poverty Pay Epidemic
The one thing this wide array of occupations has in common is rampant low pay. One in three of them earns less than £10-an-hour.
Many of them can't even afford to be off sick, as they don't have a company sickness benefit scheme, or earn too little to qualify for the pathetic £95 Statutory Sick Pay.
It's time to take action to combat the criminal negligence by governments and employers towards the very people who make society function.
Scottish Workers Solidarity Network
That's why the multi-union Scottish Workers Solidarity Network has launched an online petition demanding Scotland's politicians cough up an immediate pay rise of at least £2-an-hour for all 920,000 key workers – underpinned by a £12 national minimum wage for all, regardless of age or employment sector.
The call for a £2-an-hour rise for key workers was originally raised by the STUC exactly a year ago. It’s time for real action to fight for it. Now when the politicians and would-be MSPs are seeking our votes is timely to demand action, not just warm, soothing words.
£2 Now and a £12 Minimum Wage!
The demand that this immediate minimum step should be underpinned by an overall minimum wage of £12 is designed to match galloping inflation on food, gas, electricity and transport - but also to maximise unity within the working class.
Why, for example, would the trade union movement call for a £2-an-hour rise for key workers such as those in supermarkets - which would raise their hourly rate to at least £11.50 - but then only call for a minimum of £10 for non-food retail staff?
That would be a recipe for further division; the very weapon which the parasitic rich rely on to keep themselves in a position to gorge society's wealth whilst others starve or resort to free food handouts, after doing a week's work.
While fully supporting the fight for 15% for all NHS workers, and the Fight for £15 for care workers, the Scottish Workers Solidarity Network has also put forward this unifying demand for £2now and a £12 minimum wage.
No Hiding Place for Scottish Government
There can be no hiding behind the excuse that this is a matter reserved to Westminster. Half of Scotland's 920,000 key workers are directly employed in Scotland's public sector and many more are funded by it.
The Scottish government has the power to immediately combat the criminal levels of in-work poverty and also set the benchmark which would help trade unionists force private sector employers to match that pay rise.
Sign the Online Petition today. Ask your trade union, stewards committee, Trades Union Council or students union to circulate it to all members, as for example Strathclyde UCU branch has done to its 800 members: http://chng.it/SZdLpVXwkB
Pile the pressure on the politicians as they plead for our votes.
Take one small step to help end the sickening class divide between the engorged, parasitic rich and the rest of us.
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Offshore workers' union leader Jake Molloy speaking at Voice Public Forum |
WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT THIS?
1. Please SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION TODAY - and then ask your union or students union or community group to circulate it and encourage others to SIGN it too - demanding ACTION from our MSPs - for an immediate £2-an-hour rise for ALL 920,000 key workers in Scotland, and a national minimum wage of at least £12: http://chng.it/SZdLpVXwkB
2. This article has been published in the Scottish Socialist Voice - a fortnightly Online publication that is always on the side of workers, giving those in struggle a voice, interviewing those on strike or fighting back. Please look at taking out a SUBSCRIPTION to the Voice: for a modest £10 you will get 12 issues in your Inbox: https://socialistvoice.scot/subscriptions/
3. The Voice is holding a Public Forum on Thursday 25th March at 7pm, on Zoom. Entitled 'Covid, Climate Change & Workers' rights'.
Speakers include nurses fighting for a restorative 15% pay settlement for all NHS staff; a striking Scottish Gas engineer; Jake Molloy, RMT union organiser of N Sea offshore workers, on the issues involved in a genuinely Just Transition to green energy that defends the livelihoods of workers in the fossil fuel sector; and myself.
Get your FREE Eventbrite ticket today - attend this important and interesting event: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/public-rally-covid-climate-change-workers-rights-tickets-145877095319?
Thanks for turning IDEAS and BELIEFS into ACTION.
